River Daughter
7.5 x 11 inches
gouache and marker on inkjet photo print
2019


“In 1991, I bought a postcard on a trip to Italy of an adolescent girl in a red dress with her boots off waiting to be carried across a river by Saint Christopher. When I was unable to work, I used to have a morning practice of making small gouache paintings on a drafting table looking out through an enormous window where I could see about twenty miles into the desert in California. I copied the postcard, and after a while, just painted the girl who had black hair. As time went by, she became bigger with reddish hair. Years later she turned up again, painted over photographs. Like this one.”

Nancy Mitchnick is a painter and educator in Detroit. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Pollock–Krasner Foundation Fellowships, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award.



View next: Three Fold Commissions: Slow Geometry by Patrick Hill






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.

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.