What sets Charlie apart is color. Drawn away from the turquoise common to Southwestern jewelry, he develops rich patinas in shades of gold, rust, red, purple, blue, and green, achieved through a proprietary technique using liver of sulfur on silver—a method he perfected through years of trial and error.

The fine, clean lines that define his work are incised into the tufa with dental tools he has used for over twenty years. His designs draw on Navajo landscape scenes, the spiritual figures of the Yei Bi'Ci, sandpainting motifs, and the medicine man symbol, and he moves fluidly between mosaic, channel inlay, and set natural stones. He is also a painter and sculptor.

In tufa casting, however, Charlie is largely self-taught—the technique was never part of his formal curriculum. Inspired by the tufa-cast work of masters like Charles Loloma and Preston Monongye, he apprenticed himself to jewelers he admired and set out to make his lines finer and cleaner than anyone before him.

That pursuit has earned him international acclaim and the field's highest honors: Best of Show and Best of Class at the Heard Museum, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and Santa Fe Indian Market, as well as the Raymond Dewey Memorial Award for Excellence in Tufa Stone Casting. Today, alongside his own work, he teaches and advises young Native artists from around the world in his distinctive methods.