Weaver taught ancient craft to others

Gladys Kukana Grace, a master lauhala weaver and recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, died Thursday at Kuakini Medical Center. She was 93.

Grace, known as "Aunty Gladys" to those she mentored, learned the art of lauhala weaving from her maternal grandmother while growing up on Hawaii island’s South Kona coast.

"The NEA joins Aunty Gladys’s family, friends and students in mourning this loss while celebrating her life and contributions to Hawaiian culture," the NEA said in a statement.

Grace received the NEA fellowship in 2010.

In an interview with the NEA that year, she said, "You weave with the goodness of your heart within.

"If your heart is good, clean, and your spirit is good, then you are able to learn to make a hat and make beautiful hats and your hat will look how beautiful you are. And if you don’t feel good, you’re angry with anybody or you’re not a pleasant person, your hat will show everything on it. So I teach them, weave with how you feel inside you and it makes you become a good person."

Her family was known for weaving hats in a technique of light and dark contrasting patterns known as "anoni."

The knowledge of techniques and patterns were typically closely guarded family secrets, without written instructions, but Grace would teach it to anyone with a desire to learn because she wanted to keep traditional lauhala weaving from becoming a lost art.

Since the 1980s, she had given private lessons from her home and taught classes and workshops to hundreds of students throughout the isles.

Grace’s lessons would include where and when to collect fronds from a lauhala tree, how to prepare them and the complex patterns of weaving.

In 1997, Grace founded a weaving club — Ulana Me Ka Lokomaikai — with Frank Masagatani, one of her earliest students.

From 1988 to 1998, she was part of the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts’ Folk Arts’ Apprenticeship program.

Grace was a featured artist throughout the Pacific Islands and the United States, including the Bishop Museum and Smithsonian Institution. Last year, the Honolulu Museum of Art presented "Ulana Me Ka Lokomaika‘i: To weave from the goodness within," to honor Grace.

Service arrangements are pending.