Jay Mercado Fine Art & Three Poems Gallery
Artist Jay Mercado and his wife, Teresa Marchese, are bringing two complementary creative spaces together under one roof in Asheville’s River Arts District. Jay Mercado Fine Art & Three Poems Gallery occupies a bright second-floor space at 347 Depot Street, where Mercado has room to work at an ambitious scale while Three Poems Gallery creates opportunities for exhibitions, events and community connection.
“The River Arts District is experiencing a strong and vital resurgence after Helene,” Mercado says. “We hope to be a part of that renaissance, and an asset to the arts here and beyond.”
After attending UCLA, Mercado entered the advertising industry in Los Angeles, working as an account executive at an agency with clients including Apple, Porsche and Yamaha. An employer’s suggestion that account executives take art classes led him to a figure drawing workshop with Harry Carmean at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena.
“Something beautifully expressive within me rose up as I would draw from the figure for hours,” he says. “More classes followed and soon my life shifted course.”
Jay Mercado painting
Mercado went on to work as a storyboard artist and illustrator before joining a commercial mural studio led by muralist Robert Walker. In the early 1990s, he returned to his hometown of San Francisco, rented a storefront studio and began working independently as a fine artist.
His work draws heavily from the places and people that have surrounded him. Growing up in San Francisco exposed him to Asian markets filled with tropical fruit, the Pacific Ocean, gardens of roses and nearby agricultural landscapes shaped by the labor of migrant workers. Those images continue to appear in paintings that elevate everyday subjects and explore labor, beauty and human connection.
“My preferred subjects and themes continue to look at the overlooked,” Mercado says. “I see beauty in the mundane. I enjoy reinventing the still-life to create a not-so-still life.”
The combination of working studio and gallery gives visitors glimpses at his process rather than only finished pieces. Sketchbooks and journals document years of ideas, while works in progress might range from paintings in their earliest stages to pieces nearly ready for varnish.
When Mercado and Marchese eventually settled in Asheville, Depot Street offered an opportunity for them to build something together. The couple envisions Three Poems Gallery as a place where visual art intersects with words, music, storytelling and other forms of expression. That approach will shape the gallery’s grand opening on Thursday, October 8, from 5–8 p.m. The suggested attire is “creative or curious.”
“Visitors will climb the 21 stairs that open into a space where—as we say on our welcome board—fine art, drawings, symbols, words, found objects, romance, story and music mingle among mysticism,” Mercado says.
Find Jay Mercado Fine Art & Three Poems Gallery at 347 Depot Street, Suite 201, Asheville. Learn more at JayMercado.com and ThreePoemsGallery.com.
