Costume shop manager tells stories through garments | College of Arts and Media | SIU

Jane Pivovarnik was “gobsmacked” and “totally starstruck” on her first tour of the SIU Carbondale campus in the early 2000s, when she met “cool older students” who were creating a fashion line and studying fashion history. She had been studying at SIU Edwardsville with an undeclared major and felt a little rudderless. It was her sister - who was attending SIU Carbondale - who mentioned the “fashion department” while the sisters toured a British museum looking at clothing and other fashion artifacts.

Pivovarnik knew she loved art, history and anthropology, and “making things,” and realized the openness of the fashion program would allow her to study a lot of different subjects where she could scratch her curiosity itch while still getting her fashion degree. She became a Saluki and is now the costume shop manager for SIU’s theater program.

Studying under fashion studies professor Laura Kidd and others, she eventually did create her own fashion line which she presented on the runway in spring 2009, the semester in which she graduated. Pivovarnik was back at a crossroads: She was interested in graduate school and interested in museum studies, specifically curation and preservation of clothing and textiles.

She had begun looking at various schools away from Carbondale, but a bicycle accident in which she broke her pelvis derailed her grad school search for a while. With a need to concentrate on her physical recovery, she found herself with a diploma and no plans for what was next.

Pivovarnik considered staying at SIU as a viable option. Not knowing what SIU grad programs fit her interests, she went to the website and scrolled through the degrees, and in June, “ready to move back to my parents’ house,” she found costume design in the then Department of Theater and wrote to the graduate advisor. She quickly got her paperwork in and took a tour.

The department was deep in its season of McLeod Summer Playhouse, and it was “chaotic.” But in the costume shop, as an actress was getting fitted for a costume, Pivovarnik almost couldn’t help herself and, using her fashion studies technology knowledge, jumped in to help.

What happened next? She was hired to work in the costume shop for that summer, where she says, “I sewed my brains out” for a production of Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.” She found a new home in the basement costume shop. That fall, she began her Master of Fine Arts graduate career in costume design.

Pivovarnik found the transition from fashion studies into costume design almost seamless because both incorporate visual storytelling. The former is the story with garments in a fashion line, and in the latter, you’re telling the story of the play with the garments of the characters.

She especially found it exciting to design for new plays, plays that were written in the MFA playwrighting program, because she was working almost side-by-side with the playwright to visualize the world that the written characters were living in.

In 2012, Jane “hit the ground running” by moving to California for a costume shop job at the Pacific Conservatory Theater. She was there for about two years before taking another costume shop job at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, which brought her much closer to her family.

After a move back to the West Coast, specifically Portland, Oregon, “for love”, she and that love moved back to Carbondale for his job. Pivovarnik continued working in the professional theater, doing contract work remotely. In 2019, she was hired by SIU’s theater department as an assistant professor of practice and stepped into the role of costume shop supervisor. While she teaches formal classes each semester, most of her teaching is actually in the shop, supervising students as they work on the design and construction of costumes for the School of Theater and Dance’s productions.

Pivovarnik has always been drawn to teaching, coming from a long line of teachers — her mother and aunt were both teachers. When working with students, she loves seeing the “lightbulbs going off in their head,” hoping that they leave interactions with her with “their world being bigger.” She cherishes encouraging her students, nurturing the incubation of design ideas and seeing their ideas come to life. She loves being “on their team” through this process. Being an artist is “really scary, putting your ideas out there,” so she creates an atmosphere of support in the costume shop, knowing that her students may have failures, but they will learn from those failures.

Pivovarnik knows she will remain in Carbondale for a long time — she and her husband are building a family here, and they love the region’s beauty and the quirkiness of the people. She hopes to design more, especially with dance, as the school expands its dance program and performances.

She also knows she will never be far from a classroom or teaching. “It’s in my blood,” she says, and she can’t stay away from learning — for herself and others.