︎


Golden Haiku
11 x 17 inches
paint marker on found accountant paper
2021

“There is something special about the elegance and brevity of a haiku. This piece is from an ongoing series of visual haiku I work on as a form of meditation and as a way to connect with the heartbeat of my studio. I continue to work on these haiku as an opening to openness.”

M. Saffell Gardner, a native of Detroit, is a painter, sculptor, mixed media artist, lecturer, and educator. He holds BFA and MFA degrees in Painting from Wayne State University and is a 2015 Kresge Fellow in Visual Art.



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.