Yukio Ozaki says he alters perfection to make it more perfect. Clay, glaze and the mystery of the fire in the kiln inspire him to create his own set of rules. In fact, his wheel-thrown bowls and hand-built sculptures tell a story of not following the rules.

He throws pots, bowls and containers on a wheel. Then he drops and squishes them, calling it a "purposeful accident." He carves into the clay, then, "I offer it up to the gods of the fire. Once you put it in the kiln it is out of your control."

Glaze is another mystery of the gods. He says he loves to watch it run, not controlling it. "I don’t like exact brushing. I let glaze do things, be what it wants."

Some of Ozaki’s bowls look like they are covered in delicious rivers of raspberry jam, others have glowing blue ripples of a mountain stream. Tall vessels look like they are woven of fine linen or carved into an exact relief map of the Koolau Mountains. Large sculptures depict mineral mines and Earth mothers.

The Louis Pohl Gallery is filled with 30 such examples of Ozaki’s art, from $40 bowls to $12,000 sculptures, for "Patche-works, Textures & Glazes," on exhibit through March 28.

Rarely does anyone walk into the gallery without reaching out to touch a bowl or stroke a sculpture: "Exactly what I strive for," Ozaki says.

A longtime friend of gallery owner Sandy Pohl and her late husband, Louis Pohl, Ozaki says he really wants to present something for everyone and every pocketbook.

Ozaki has created five state-commissioned artworks. Sixteen of his pieces have been purchased by the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and his work is in collections of the Honolulu Museum of Art and the City and County of Honolulu. Ozaki was named a "Living Treasure of Hawaii" by the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii.

"That is all very fine," he says. But the accomplishment that brings out his infectious smile is that he has taught more than 2,500 students as an art professor at Chaminade University.

"Even better, they come back and we talk for hours about art and life."

Eventually, they hear their teacher’s story of being an accidental artist.

Born in Japan to a traditional Japanese family, Ozaki did the typical boy thing and played sports. His only art experience was summer homework, of which he says his father, a fine craftsman, "pretty much did the whole thing. I turned it in, it was too refined to be done by a kid."

At 15, Ozaki saw an avant garde Japanese flower exhibit with sticks and steel, branches and a single flower. He thought, "I could do that."

So when girls from his class started a flower-arranging club, he wanted to join. His coach’s response: "No way, boys don’t do that." So he told his advisers that he was considering owning his own flower arranging company and, "thinking business, that was different," he says. He joined the club.

His teacher was a strong woman, instilling discipline, balance and the art of seeing objects for their shapes and materials.

He says good advice brought him to Hawaii, where the University of Hawaii art department captured his imagination.

"Ron Kowalke, Russell Davidson, Claude Horan, Louis Pohl, they were all there, accessible to us young artist students. They offered me a new way of looking, at myself and at art," he recalls.

He met and married noted fiber artist Elizabeth Train, and they had two sons. He took his teaching job, he says, not as much for the compensation but for the satisfaction of the response of students.

What’s next?

"Taking still-soft thrown pots, smashing and then carving them. Feldspar stone ground fine and brushed into glaze that comes out of the kiln looking like something from the bottom of the ocean. Stone carvings from rocks that tell me what’s inside," he says, providing a glimpse into his creative mind.