Artist’s wine-bottle etchings the toast of Tivoli Village

Artist Adu Jahmal’s installation at Tivoli Village has gotten attention for some of its over-sized paitings, but more notably for another medium: wine bottles.

One pays homage to Michael Jackson with a sparkling white glove; another features an Egyptian pharaoh. Historical black figures are another favorite subject of Jahmal’s.

Summerlin-area resident Helene Boris discovered Jahmal soon after his studio opened in spring.

“I was very taken how he pulled in various real-life people from the jazz world, iconic people, and incorporated it into his art,” she said. “… It’s something you’d see at a New York art gallery opening, in Manhattan, and where the whole room would be filled. More people in Las Vegas need to know about this because we don’t have anything like it.”

Jahmal uses a modern air compressor to etch the galss. Although he wears a respirator, he’s sure his lungs are filled with minuscule particles of glass. But the final result is worth it, he said.

“It has to be in your blood to cut like that,” Jahmal said in unabashed admiration of his work.

Most people who work at the shopping center refer to him as “the bottle man.” Jahmal, a Chicago native who recently moved from Los Angeles, said he’s been wanting to bring his art to Las Vegas.

“Most people think (artists) should be on the Strip, and if you’re a certain age, it’s exciting, yeah,” said Jahmal, 50. “The Strip can be a bit overwhelming. But Tivoli? I’m driving and I saw this, and I went, ‘It’s an oasis.’”

He settled in a 1,700-square-foot space in mid-August. There’s no sign out front to indicate he’s open for business and no set hours of operation. But step inside and be prepared to be greeted with a cool-cat strut ( the result of an accident, he confessed), a welcoming manner and a grin that won’t stop.

His paintings depict his neighborhood in Chicago, boxers, club life and jazz greats such as Duke Ellington. The wine bottles, full of vino, adorn the walls as well.

He credits his upbringing and his grandmother, Annabelle Walton, with fine-tuning his natural ability for math and for approaching problems from a engineer’s viewpoint. Anything that broke around her house, she called on him to fix, even after he was a young man pursuing his own career. One day, she asked him to repair a 4-by-6-inch photo that had been torn. The photo, of two men in jazz-era clothing, struck a chord in Jahmal. It was in the late 1990s and a turning point for Jahmal.

He never had planned on being an artist before that, but he decided to replicate it as a painting. It ended up more than 3 feet wide.

“In school, I always thought artists were the kids who couldn’t read,” Jahmal said. “That they sat in the back of the room, just doodling.”

More paintings followed. Soon he was doing commissioned work and left his “real” job as a broker at Lehman Brothers.

But artists are perennially one paycheck away from bankruptcy, he said. He opened a wine business in LA, did art on the side and played percussion in a jazz band at night.

While installing an art piece in 2015, Jahmal lost his balance and fell 28 feet off a ladder, he said. He broke his right foot and couldn’t work. Soon after, he was asked if he could add a monogram to a wine bottle for a couple who were getting married.

“Wine bottle? I’d never done one in my life. But my rent was due,” he said, laughing. “So I said yes.”

He found a used engraver’s tool for $20, researched how to etch glass and soon had the piece finished. That led to him doing his own designs.

He thought about how to make money at it. Inspiration hit. He called his wine customers and told them that for every two bottles of wine they bought from him, he’d give them a free monogrammed glass.

“There was a line down the block,” he said.

Jahmal to experiment on bottles, cutting deeper and using stippling to affect shadows. His simple designs evolved to include color and jewels.

Mario Brasner, whose World Heritage Collection photo gallery faces Jahmal’s installation, said the new display “really complements the property. … I think variety is always great.”

Besides single bottles, Jahmal crafts series, such as Renaissance or Motown themes.

Bottles start at $250; large prints have been auctioned off for as much as $50,000, he said.

Contact Jan Hogan at jhogan@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2949.