When Louis Pohl died in 1999, a bank took back his reverse-mortgaged Nuuanu house. His wife of three years, Sandra, suddenly had no income, no home and no job. She was in her mid-50s — too young for Social Security, too old to start over as a social worker — and fully inspired by her husband’s ideas, especially the mantra about ordinary people needing to be “more artful.”

“I had to do something,” she said. So Sandra Pohl took the artwork she inherited and started her first gallery; some things worked and others didn’t. She closed that one and opened another, learned more about the art business and moved the gallery again, and again. Her fourth Pohl-focused gallery now occupies 1,500 square feet in Chinatown, near the Hawaii Theatre. It will offer a free party Saturday night to commemorate what would have been Pohl’s 100th birthday. This “Centennial Celebration” also includes the first anniversary of another of Pohl’s legacies, the Creative Arts Experience program.

That program’s director, Su Atta, left social work to pursue her interests in watercolor and promoting arts experiences for all types of people. Atta was presenting her paintings at the Pohl gallery a few years ago when she started talking to Pohl about her larger vision for an arts program that embraced all comers. Pohl recognized the concept as something she and her husband had discussed in depth as well.

In his childhood in Cincinnati, Louis Pohl suffered from rheumatic fever, making walking painful and preventing him from entering school until he was 8. To pass the time, he spent many of his stationary hours drawing. After recovering he worked as a caddie at a local golf course.

One day during the middle of the Great Depression — as goes the story that circulates among the family — a group of wealthy women were golfing and made a bet that the loser would have to make the teenage caddie’s dream come true. At the end of the round, the loser of the bet asked Pohl what he wanted, and he reportedly responded, “I want to go to art school.”

After finishing his Art Academy of Cincinnati training, the young man took whatever creative job he could find, including that of a window display designer and furniture painter. He enlisted in the Navy in World War II and was deployed to Hawaii, where, among other tasks, he painted ships. After the war he returned to Cincinnati and helped with the government’s Works Progress Administration, which included an assignment to paint the portrait of then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Pohl eventually returned to Oahu when one of his former teachers was looking for an instructor to assist at the then-Honolulu Academy of Arts (now the Honolulu Museum of Art). Besides teaching there for decades, he also served as an arts educator for Kamehameha Schools. He became well known for his abstract imagery of water scenes, bird scenes and volcanoes.

“People remember him,” Sandra Pohl said. “They come here just to look at his artwork. … He was really, really popular.”

The gallery sells Louis Pohl’s original pieces, ranging from unsigned collagraphs, for $225, to oil paintings, such as “Off Waikiki,” for $35,000. It also regularly hosts public-oriented events, such as those sponsored by the Creative Arts Experience.

Sandra Pohl and Atta joined forces a year ago on that program, with Pohl blending the Louis Pohl Foundation structure into the arrangement, and they have attracted more than 500 people so far to their free or low-cost activities. Atta volunteers her time as the program’s director and looks for ways to involve more people in art of all types. She said, “Sometimes it’s just an animal stamp here, or make your name look cool there.”

The program’s philosophy is that “everyone has talent,” Atta added. “You don’t need to call yourself an artist to create something that you made for yourself. Hopefully, in that process, people will have epiphanies and want to try to do a bit more.”

Pohl said the gallery and the program are extensions of her husband’s life’s work.

“He wanted to have an art gallery downtown. He wanted to fund an arts center,” Pohl said. “He wanted to work with ordinary people, who did not have any art experience. … This is his legacy. We’re just getting people together to do art.”