Jun Kaneko - ceramics master, innovator, painter and sculptor - is surprisingly casual about his work.

"I go with the flow. I don't really have too much preconceived idea," he said in his soft voice, heavy with a Japanese accent. He spoke from his home and studio in Omaha, Neb. "The more you plan it, you restrict your freedom.

"Obviously, I have to have some idea when I get going. Then I put one line here, and the next line there. I keep myself open to see if the next spot might help the first mark. So I think it's not just the art. I really don't like restricted conditions, like, you know, really tight systems and stuff. I think that's my nature."

You can see a the breadth of Kaneko's work - from sculpture to painting - at the Boise Art Museum from Saturday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Feb. 8.

The museum lobby is taken over by a 6-foot, sky blue head. Eyes closed, Buddha-like, it greets you as you enter. Then Kaneko's large ceramic shapes create an unworldly landscape inside the main galleries. Rounded triangles, squares and dangos (a Japanese word meaning closed form) are wrapped in layered glazes, painted to intriguing perfection.

Kaneko is possibly the most known and influential ceramic artist working today. He also is a painter and has designed two operas.

In his 50-plus years as a working artist, Kaneko has redefined contemporary ceramics in the same way Dale Chihuly has glass, or Robert Rauschenberg, printmaking.

He has pushed it onto the mainstream international stage like no other artist before him through large-scale public art installations such as "Kaneko on Park Avenue," three giant head sculptures installed in the median between 52nd and 54th streets in New York City.

Kaneko started with ceramics with humble expectations.

He traveled to California from Japan in 1963 to study painting. When he arrived, speaking no English and knowing no one, he stayed at the home of a well-known ceramic collector for several months.

"It was a pure accident, but I was shocked to see that many fantastic pieces of ceramic. I said to myself, 'I should at least try (to do it) and see how I feel,' " he said.

Though his focus had been painting, and many examples of his canvases are at the museum, he became more intrigued by clay. He studied with the most influential ceramicists of the California Clay Movement, including Peter Voulkos, who brought ceramics into the domain of modern art.

But Kaneko always did it his way.

"I didn't want to get caught up in the technical part of it. My teachers tried to teach me throwing and all that, but I went the other way. I just make a slab. Anyone can make a slab. Pound it down; make a flat piece and paint on it. For me that was very natural."

From there, he honed his "point of view," he said, and pushed himself to experiment with the medium and work on increasingly larger scale.

"I keep growing and growing, and sometimes it gets out of control," he said.

Kaneko works in an old Omaha mattress factory he turned into a studio with 30-foot-wide kilns that fire his monolithic sculptures, a process that takes months.

"My major interest and my most important piece is hopefully the next piece. I don't know what that is. If I did, I probably wouldn't do my work," he said.