Goodwill: the new art-supply store

Memories can be stirred by the strangest of things—the whistle of a faraway train, an acrid whiff of burning leaves, or, as for Proust, a madeleine soaked in a decoction of lime flower.

“Eclipse,” a Mijanovich work quilted from pieced vintage cotton clothing, 46” by 49”.

Quilters Libby and Jim Mijanovich do it with tiny snippets of fabric.

Their works can be gregarious or subdued, but the intricate movement from one strip to the next creates unexpected pattern and shape, including mountain landscapes and designs influenced by time-honored geometric shapes: diamonds, chevrons, triangles.

Recycling is the prevailing motif. Each piece is created from old cotton clothing, fabric patterns bound to recall forgotten events and feelings: the plaid shirt you wore behind the barn with a certain someone, or the printed dress your mother bought you that was ridiculed by your schoolmates. They all find new life in the hands of the Mijanoviches.

The process, appropriately, involves family collaboration. Each work begins as a pile of 25 or 30 old shirts, skirts and dresses that are washed and deconstructed. Collars and cuffs are liberated, seams cut out, and pockets carefully picked off to be used later as labels on finished pieces. The resulting piles of fabric are cut into small wedges and sorted. The work then turns to design decisions. The family Mijanovich—Libby, Jim and their sons Burns and Spencer—all work toward the finished pieces.

Self-taught, the Mijanoviches began their enterprise after both Jim and Libby left jobs in health care.

“We visited a woodworker friend in Tryon,” says Libby, “and asked, ‘How do you do this?’” The crafter offered to take them to a Philadelphia trade show, where they wandered and looked for three days. Libby knew she was on the right track when she came across an exhibitor who made her work from recycled woolen sweaters. She decided right away that cotton would be her “wood.” She thought of the motherlode of different patterns and textures to be found in shirts, with an occasional skirt or dress thrown in.

The garments are bought at Goodwill, and what with the many hundreds of slices of different colors, patterns and textures in each work, decisions about what goes where can be difficult. Some works have a wide variety of colors and prints, others are all but monochromatic.

All strive to give an illusion of light. “I Wish I May, I Wish I Might” is a large work, a childhood fantasy in purples and blue-greens with an occasional salmon-pink accent. A large, pale diamond in the middle of the piece is centered with a dark star.

Another work evoking childhood memories with its theme as well as with its fabric is “Mirror Mirror.” The heavy, ornate frame of Snow White’s wicked stepmother’s magic mirror is referenced in the dark, ominous border of the piece. The interior is executed in—what else?—faded creams and whites.

“Eclipse” is the title of a triptych in grays and browns with sparse bits of black. The panels are vertical, constructed of multi-directional chevrons. Metallic-threaded stitching along the sides creates sun-ray shapes.

The monochromatic works, no matter what the imagery, feel peaceful: in fact, one is titled just that. The stories that could be told about where and by whom these former clothes were worn are one reason the works resonate. But cut through and reconstructed, they now have new tales to tell.

[Connie Bostic is an Asheville-based painter and writer.]

Works by Jim and Libby Mijanovich can be seen in the Lobby Gallery at Asheville Community Theatre (35 E. Walnut St.) through Monday, May 28. 254-1320.