"The only thing that's changed about David is the length of his ponytail," joked one former student. "He taught by simply doing art. It's his life and it's beautiful."

David Kuraoka and his circle are the focus of a well-crafted ceramics show, "Firing a Legacy: David Kuraoka and San Francisco State University," running through June 1 at the Pence Gallery in Davis.

It's hard to believe the art world once considered ceramics a lower art form than painting or sculpture. Over the past half-century, a new scientific understanding of the discipline has expanded the view of its possibilities.

University art departments such as those at UC Davis, Sacramento State and San Francisco State have demonstrated the importance of ceramics. Works made from clay are now considered to be among the strengths of contemporary American art.

Kuraoka, who was born in Hawaii, is a master ceramicist. He is retiring as a professor and director of the ceramics program at San Francisco State.

"I'm old-fashioned," he said. "I work emotionally, and one work leads to the next work."

Kuraoka is well-known for transforming traditional ceramic vessels into modern sculpture. In "Hapu'u" (2003), sand and surf colors are unified through a mastery of form, space, proportion and relation. The images are abstract, yet they can also be read as island landscape.

Visitors to Hawaii may remember murals by Kuraoka in the Hawaii Convention Center and the Lihue Airport. Two wall-size murals are included in the Pence exhibit.

"Water Colors" (2008) is made of hand-built glazed tiles. Bright colors and wavy lines, along with repeating patterns, suggest the imagery of both tropical flowers and reflecting ocean. Here the artist shows energy and technical expertise through his precise application of glazes.

The other tile piece is equally demanding but in a technically different way. Kuraoka produced "Fremont" (2008) through pit- firing, an ancient technique that probably evolved from campfires.

In pit-firing, clay is placed on a bed of tinder and later covered by it. Since there is no glazing, color is picked up by whatever is on the surface of the clay. Flat images, resembling monoprints, can be produced by spreading mixtures like copper carbonite and oxides around the clay. "Black lines come from copper wire, and orange tones come from salt," explained the artist.

Ceramics produced by this process are prone to shattering and cracking. "One good tile is 10 bad ones," said Kuraoka. "I have some of the bad ones on the wall to remind me to chill out."

With fired clay, personal style and artistic freedom usually require taking risks. Subject matter, material and technique become matters of choice. The best artists, like those in this show, have been required to learn all the tricks in the book.

"We cannot teach art," Kuraoka said. "I can help them learn to see, and that affects everything."

Some of the artists in this show look inward and find beauty in childhood memories and experiences. Others, looking around them, consider the tension between permanence and destruction in a modern world. Still others look toward the timeless and universal.

"They surprise me all the time," Kuraoka said. "I encourage them to find themselves."

Bill Abright, who graduated from San Francisco State in the early 1970s and has taught ceramics at the College of Marin since 1975, enjoys the tactile challenge of manipulating clay and the visual delight of getting it right. His mask "Crusty" (2006) depicts a man of the earth, baked, dry and rather scarred by experience. The work shows how the artist stretches the clay, even to the point of breaking the surface, and how he then responds to the visual challenge.

This honesty offers considerable insight into the creative process. "I don't have an idea necessarily when I start," Abright said. Rather, he makes choices that flow from intuition and experience. He'll even break the rules, using acrylic paint and graphite pencil, for example, instead of glaze.