Putting Personality into Cloth

Yoko Kano
（dyer and weaver）

The noren in Katsuyama are a collaboration between the local residents and artists. Each individually crafted noren contains a personal meaning for the people who work in the shop it decorates. My work is to express their personalities as faithfully as I can in the cloth. It's great to have a relationship with people I see every day where they can tell me exactly what they expect to see in their noren. I hope that visitors will get a sense of who the people in each shop are by looking at the noren over the door and that each resident can proudly say,"Mine is the best."