Given the circumstances on the northern Minnesota farm she grew up on, it’s really no surprise how Esther Iverson developed an aptitude for costume making.
“Little farm, big family,” says Iverson, sitting in the Minnesota State University costume shop on the eve of her official departure from MSU. “And if you wanted clothes, you made them yourself.”
That’s what she did. And Iverson, 52, has never stopped. She made costumes in high school. Made costumes at Bethany Lutheran College. She made them at MSU, for Gustavus Adolphus College, for Mankato East and West high schools. She made them for the Merely Players Community Theater. She even made them for the Mankato Figure Skating Club.
And she’ll continue to make them. Just not in Mankato.
Iverson’s tenure as MSU’s grande dame of costume-making has come to an end. Today, Iverson will walk through commencement exercises with the rest of her fellow graduates and pick up her master of fine arts degree, a degree she earned while holding her full-time job at the costume shop.
For Iverson, picking up that degree is the final hurdle in her journey to the next phase of her career and life.
Earning that degree allows her to teach at the college level. And next fall, she’ll begin her new job as a faculty member of Bowling Green University in Ohio.
“I am not a traditional student,” she said. “None of what I’ve done is the way it’s normally done.”
Iverson grew up on a dairy farm in Clearbrook, a few miles northwest of Bemidji. She graduated from Clearbrook High School in 1972, and then went to Bethany Lutheran College. She did some costuming in high school and while at Bethany.
After Bethany, she got married and started work at First Bank. While there, she did everything — teller, personal banking, etc. bank,” she said, “but it wasn’t as creative as I liked.”
She’d been doing some costume work for Bethany, but not as much as she’d wanted.
Then, in the early 1980s, she saw an ad in the newspaper that caught her attention. It was a casting call for an MSU production of “The Music Man.” She auditioned and landed the part of, fittingly, Mrs. Squires, the banker’s wife.
That experience inspired her to pursue her love of the theater and costuming. She enrolled in classes at MSU part time. Then, she quit her job at the bank to pursue it full time. Eventually she earned her degree in technical theater with an emphasis in costuming. Right when she did so, a vacancy opened up in MSU’s costume shop, and she’s been there ever since.
Eventually, she decided to pursue a master’s degree. And not long after that, she opted to up its prestige by turning it into a master of fine arts.
Getting it done, though, wasn’t easy. Running the costume shop at MSU, taking on costume design duties as well as construction and being a full-time student nearly requires a degree in time management. She pulled it off, she says, with a little help from Paul Hustoles, chairman of the department of Theater and Dance.
“A few times it was like, ‘OK Paul, do you want your show finished or do you want your theater history paper finished,’” she said.
In light of that, she’s been given a month or so to tie up the loose ends of her spring semester coursework. And then it’s off to Ohio.
When she goes, she’ll do so with an unexpected $1,000 in her pocket. She recently learned she was this year’s recipient of the Blethen Fine Arts Award, established in honor of Toy Wilson Blethen.
After receiving the award, she thought back to a summer in the 1980s when she was asked to do some costume work for the Bend of the River Festival.
Each year the festival featured a series of “Queens,” usually well known ladies in town. That summer, Toy Wilson was one of the Queens.
For more Free Press news go to www.mankatofreepress.com.
Email this article | Permanent link | Topstories news | Topstories news archives
Minnesota State
University, Mankato
Mankato, MN 56001
1-800-722-0544
© 2005-2013 Minnesota State University, Mankato. Minnesota State University, Mankato is a member of
Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system and an affirmative action/equal opportunity university.
