Artist travels from Ethiopia to ‘The Other Side of Las Vegas’ at Winchester Gallery

Lonely, vacant, people-less city.

Yes ... Las Vegas.

"They tell stories about Las Vegas," says Ethiopian-born artist Abraham Abebe, 24, who cast his canny eye on the quieter pockets of a city famed for emptying people's pockets on that cacophonous boulevard with the cavernous casinos.

Shhhh. This is "The Other Side of Las Vegas," as depicted by a student artist through immigrant eyes.

"Before I came to Las Vegas, I used to watch TV shows and movies about Las Vegas," says Abebe in heavily accented English, soft-spoken and precise in his conversation, in contrast to his wild hairstyle. "I fell in love with this city. It's one of the greatest cities. Then after I came here, I found there is a wide range of beauty in Las Vegas. It was about the community, the streets."

Veering away from the expected portraits of Sin City's grand and gimmicky glamour, Abebe's oil paintings at the Winchester Cultural Center Gallery capture a kind of forlorn, backlot beauty of Vegas vistas from parking garages, local motels and power lines to apartment houses and the stillness of downtown at offpeak hours.

"I appreciate the hotels and the lights. But after moving here, I start going around to the west side, south side, east side and I notice a different beauty in different neighborhoods, things people don't notice and don't really care about," says the artist still studying at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Shadows lend a melancholy feel, as many paintings are based on photos shot as the light of dawn and dusk slowly crept across the city, suggesting the passage of time, day slipping into night. "You see those shadows, they create some drama. You see those electric lines and poles, that's the beauty I tried to get across."

Elements of the Strip are depicted in a couple of pieces, including a diagonal view from UNLV's parking garage that takes in Wynn Las Vegas, The Venetian and even the World of Coca-Cola. However, most paintings -- their style clean, uncluttered, draped in soothing pastels -- take us to unassuming stops along the city, including a parking garage at Fourth Street, shadowy Carson Avenue, deserted but for parking meters, a storefront at Fremont and Sixth streets and boarded-up houses on 12th Street.

"It's a unique viewpoint of Las Vegas," says Wendy Kveck, the gallery's curator. "You're drawn into the paintings initially by the beauty and the color and the light and the compositional elements, but as you spend time with the paintings, you realize what they're representing, the abandoned house or vacant storefront, the lonely factor. There aren't any people in the paintings."

Drawn into art as a child in Ethiopia by copying illustrations made by an older brother, Abebe eventually advanced to doing drawings based on newspaper stories, before his family decided to move to the United States in 2003.

"I came for an opportunity for an education and a better life," says Abebe, who was 16 when he left Ethiopia, his family initially settling in Reno. "After I came here to America, I went to the library and got the art books and tried to learn techniques, how to set up shadow and light."

After graduating from the Truckee Meadows Community College with an associate of arts degree, Abebe moved on in 2007 to UNLV, which conferred a bachelor's degree in painting and graphic design on him in 2010. He also participated in the Adelaide Fringe Invitational Exhibition in Australia in 2009.

This fall, he returns to UNLV to get started on a master of fine arts degree, while -- in the noblest tradition of young artists -- he earns money working as a liquor store cashier.

"It's definitely based on the quality of the work," Kveck says about choosing artists for the gallery. "But it's also the exhibition of an emerging artist. It's exciting to work with someone when they're between those periods and what will happen next."

What's on the Winchester Gallery walls speaks to a promising future of an artist who looks beyond the obvious in a city as in-your-face as this one.

Tract homes. Barren backyards. The parking lot of downtown's Western casino.

Quiet. Lonely. Contemplative.

Not LAS VEGAS.

Just Las Vegas.

Contact reporter Steve Bornfeld at sbornfeld@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0256.