T-shirt tower display to honor 9/11 victims at UNLV

UNLV has a series of events scheduled for Thursday and Friday to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Events on the campus at 4505 S. Maryland Parkway include a display of flags at the north end of the academic mall; a wreath ceremony from 9 to 9:30 a.m. Thursday near the Flashlight sculpture at Artemus Ham Hall; and a panel discussion from 4 to 5 p.m. at the UNLV Foundations Building, where speakers will address how 9/11 has affected the nation and the world.

The centerpiece of it all is a three-story sculpture of T-shirts and accompanying memorial exhibits on display in the UNLV Lied Library. The library plans to host a dedication from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday.

UNLV alumnus Troy Gillett created two winding columns of about 5,000 shirts measuring 31 feet tall.

The T-shirts came from New York-New York, where a shrine was spontaneously created outside the hotel following 9/11. New York-New York donated all the T-shirts, photos, letters and other memorabilia to UNLV Libraries Special Collection in 2002, and each item was catalogued and stored in plastic bins.

In June, Dean of Libraries Patricia Iannuzzi contacted the College of Fine Arts alumni chapter and its director, Gillett, about the idea of creating something for the anniversary.

Gillett submitted a plan to Iannuzzi the next day, and she gave the go ahead to start building it.

"I wanted to do something that would do justice to the material," Gillett said. "This was not so much 9/11-related but peoples' response to it."

Gillett put his artistic career on hold after he graduated from UNLV and went to work as a carpenter. He owns a small construction business, Gillett Construction.

The economic downturn of 2008, and subsequent slowdown in construction in Southern Nevada, left a lot of time on his hands.

He joined the alumni chapter and started delving into art again, mostly sculpting.

Gillett worked about three weeks building the towers with the help of three students. The exhibit is his first solo display.

Iannuzzi said she was impressed with the care Gillett gave the project, especially the meticulous fashion in which he folded each shirt.

"He was very respectful of the emotion," she said. "He knew each one was a special memory someone left behind."

The only stipulation of the project, she said, was the shirts couldn't be destroyed.

"We hope to repurpose them and find new meaning for them on another anniversary," Iannuzzi said. "To try to take that moment when there was spontaneous outpouring of grief and shared humanity and move it to another time period so others can make their own meaning."

The twist of the towers are reminiscent of a DNA strand, but Gillett doesn't want to tell people what they should be seeing.

"I like the idea of leaving it open to interpretation," he said. "Otherwise you could ruin it for somebody else."

Gillett wants everyone to have a hand in the exhibit, too.

A 500-foot-long scroll will be available for visitors to write or draw on, which will be stored along with all other artifacts.

Gillett said he hopes the exhibit honors the victims of 9/11 and gets the community more interested in UNLV's library.

"I'm a big supporter of the library," Gillett said. "It's the most important building in the city."

The sculpture and accompanying memorial exhibits will be displayed through February.

Contact View education reporter Jeff Mosier at jmosier@viewnews.com or 224-5524.