Letters From Aix: How Travel Letters Inspired a Series of Handmade Artist Books
- Melanie Grant
- Jun 16
- 5 min read
TRANQUIL • LUMINOUS • ROOTED
Stories from the studio, reflections on process, and the art of the handmade.
The Inspiration Behind the Letters From Aix Handmade Artist Books
Earlier this year my cousin Ginger spent ten weeks living in Aix-en-Provence, France.
Each week she sent a letter with updates to friends and family, part travel journal, part cultural observation, and occasionally part comedy routine, describing what life was like while she was there. Her letters were vivid. Markets overflowing with flowers. Long café lunches that somehow stretched into late afternoon. The rhythm of walking ancient streets where every corner seems to hold a story.
And then there were the small moments she captured in photographs: reflections in vibrant shop windows, art studios, galleries, bouquets of flowers, culinary delights, gorgeous architecture, sculptures, glimpses of everyday life, and the beautiful poetry of old stone walls and narrow streets.
As I read her letters each week, I realized something unexpected was happening in my visual artistic world.
I wasn’t just reading them. I was beginning to imagine a new series of handmade artist books inspired by her photographs and stories. I was seeing books. A future book series.
Why Aix? A Ten-Week French Language Adventure
Ginger didn’t travel to Aix-en-Provence simply as a tourist.
She went there to study French. Yes, the complex language of French!
For ten weeks she immersed herself in language classes, spending her mornings conjugating verbs, expanding her vocabulary, and navigating the occasional grammatical curveball that French so generously provides. Each week brought a new set of linguistic victories, along with a few moments of humble surrender to irregular verbs.
But learning a language in a place like Aix is not confined to a classroom.
The real lessons happen in everyday moments: ordering coffee at a café, asking for directions in a narrow stone alley, or attempting a polite conversation with a shopkeeper while mentally flipping through vocabulary like flash cards.
Her weekly letters often included updates from class and classmates, small triumphs, funny stories from the classroom that always brought a smile, and the ongoing adventures of trying to think in another language.
At one point she joked that she had learned the most important phrase of all: how to politely admit she had absolutely no idea what someone had just said.
What struck me most while reading her letters was how the experience of learning French seemed to deepen everything else around her. The markets, the streets, the architecture, the art, the people, they all became part of the lesson.
And in a way, those weekly language classes were also the beginning of something unexpected on my end. Because without them, there would have been no letters.
And without the letters…
there would not be Letters From Aix.
When Letters Become Art
Artists often talk about inspiration arriving in mysterious ways.
Sometimes it’s a landscape. Sometimes it’s a color palette. And sometimes it arrives in the form of weekly emails from a cousin living in southern France.
Ginger generously shared many of the photographs she took during her stay, and I began experimenting with them digitally, layering, abstracting, and transforming them into digital collage compositions.
What started as simple creative play quickly turned into something more intentional.
The images began to feel like fragments of a larger story.
A story about travel. About correspondence. About how places imprint themselves on memory.
And from that idea, a new series of handmade books was born:
Letters From Aix.
The Photographs That Started It All
In this post you’ll see a few of Ginger’s original photographs from her time in Aix-en-Provence.
This is a small sampling of the images that sparked what would eventually become Letters From Aix. What I love most about them is that they aren’t staged travel photographs. They are observations. A reflection in a mirror. A quiet street scene. A glimpse of someone passing by.
They feel less like documentation and more like fragments of experience, the kinds of moments we carry home without realizing it at the time that stay with us.
Transforming Travel Photographs Into Collage
After spending time with the photographs, I began exploring a series of digital collage studies, to be revealed soon, inspired by travel imagery and memory.
The goal was never to reproduce the photographs exactly. Instead, I found myself responding to the atmosphere of the place, its layered stone surfaces, faded and intense colors, shifting light, architectural details, and profound sense of history.
Textures began to overlap. Windows became fragments of geometry. Light and shadow softened into abstract forms.
These early explorations are slowly becoming the visual language behind a new body of handmade artist books I’ve been steadily developing in the studio and currently on my workbench. In many ways, the collages feel like visual versions of Ginger’s letters, impressions rather than documentation.
Some of my favorite photographs are actually the ones where Ginger appears subtly within the image itself, often in reflections or unexpected corners of the frame.
You have to look carefully to notice her, but she is there.
Those small appearances feel a bit like visual footnotes in a letter.
A Few Things I Learned About Aix (According to Ginger)
Over ten weeks of correspondence, Ginger shared many observations about life in Aix. A few highlights:
• The French take their bread very seriously • Coffee is not something you grab and go, it’s something you sit down for • Markets are both a grocery store and a social event • Getting slightly lost in old cities is part of the experience • And apparently, pigeons in France are just as bold as pigeons anywhere else! Her letters were thoughtful, observant, and frequently very amusing.
They reminded me that travel is rarely just about the destination. It’s about the accumulation of small and special moments and being totally present.
From Correspondence to Handmade Books
The Letters From Aix books, soon to be revealed, are inspired by the idea of correspondence.
Each book becomes a kind of visual letter, a place where fragments of imagery, texture, and memory come together.
Just as Ginger sent weekly letters describing her experiences, her growing affection for Provence, and the rhythm of life she discovered there, these books reflect the places, impressions, and moments that found their way into her correspondence.
They are not travel journals.
They are something a little unexpected.
They are letters and photography translated into art.
The Beginning of a New Handmade Book Series
The new collection, coming soon, is just the beginning. The Letters From Aix series will continue to evolve as I create new books inspired by Ginger’s photographs, her observations, and the spirit of the place she experienced. It’s a reminder that inspiration often arrives through connection, through stories, shared experiences, and the simple act of writing a letter. And sometimes, those letters travel a long way before they become art.
If you would like to follow the development of the Letters From Aix / handmade artist book series, I occasionally share new work, behind-the-scenes glimpses of my process, and early previews of upcoming collections in my newsletter.
If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, you’re warmly invited to join the list.
You can sign up on my website at: melaniegrantdesign.com
Rooted in place • Shaped by hand • Becoming what feels true
Melanie Grant — Northern Idaho
Melanie, this was such a delight to read. I could imagine being on those streets and my soul ACHES to be there...to take a full afternoon for lunch or coffee, to not feel rushed. Ahh. 😎 I am eager to see your new series.