When Carter's, the biggest children's clothes maker in the U.S., chose to use blind artist Emu Namae's pastel drawings on their children's line, new doors opened in Namae's life.
Working outside of Japan has been the artist's longtime dream. "I have a borderless sense of value and my artwork is borderless too, in the way that the colors go over the lines and the themes cross over all nationalities. I've always felt that I fit better into the international arena than the Japanese one," says the artist.
The company has always used their own designers, with the exception of John Lennon, who became their first outside artist. Namae is now the second. This opportunity means a great deal to Namae, who admires Lennon tremendously, and says that ever since Lennon's death in 1980, he has made a vow to himself to contribute something to the world, even though it might only be a small fraction of what Lennon achieved.