Mille Fontaines

Mission Statement

Mille Fontaines provides a platform for artistic expression regardless of media, genre, or language. It highlights the work of creatives, giving them the opportunity to be heard and recognized. More than that, it puts art and artists in conversation, pairing visual art with the written word, enhancing it all with excursions into the audio and video spheres. 

Centered on the ACM-IAU community, Mille Fontaines is a fruitful space for students to share their experience of living and learning around the Mediterranean. In doing so, it becomes a crossroads for various cultures to interact through art.

Origins

Founded in Fall 2022 by Rose Letsinger at the Aix-en-Provence flagship campus of ACM-IAU; the intent of Mille Fontaines has always been to facilitate an inclusive space of belonging for all artist communities. Everyone associated with the journal, past and present, has been a study abroad student. We live in a foreign culture and consistently speak a foreign language. We are far from home, from friends, from family. Mille Fontaines aims to create a community in which all folks away from their origins can find a space of acceptance and appreciation.

The journal takes its name from the history of the city in which it is based. Aix was founded by Romans to take advantage of the natural springs in the area. They constructed fountains on almost every street corner. Because of these fountains, Aix-en-Provence is called “The City of a Thousand Fountains” or “la ville aux mille fontaines” in French.

History

When Rose first initiated this project, there was no guideline or rulebook. She worked with what was available. To that end, the first edition was printed within the Aix-en-Provence campus’ Manning Hall. The copies were manually hole-punched, and tied together with colorful strings of yarn. The second edition received a budgetary stipend in accordance with the success of the experimental inaugural endeavor. Due to the time constraints of a semestrial – which requires completion in a four month period for its contributors to have a physical copy – the successive edition was printed as a pamphlet, with staples as its binding.

Charles DeLeon-Franzen took over Mille Fontaines in Fall 2023. Inexperienced as to the running of a literary and fine arts journal, he struggled to accrue contributions, having only 12 contributors and 24 submissions. Following Rose’s lead, he printed the journal as a pamphlet, intending it to be stapled mechanically… only to have the machine break. Thus ensued a late night in his kitchen, stapling all 60 copies by hand the night before the Release Event.

Each successive edition thereafter brought knowledge through experience, but the fourth edition truly kickstarted what we know as the contemporary Mille Fontaines. A team of overly competent students gathered together to enhance this creative idea: Aidan Barton – a painter and photographer with a background (and Masters degree) in Computer Science; Anneka Weicht – a poet and translator who had worked on The Pub at Wheaton College; and Ashlyn Jordan – a professional graphic designer with a flair for visual arts. Between these folks – in the course of four months – a qualitative standard was set for Mille Fontaines: an online format on which to archive and publish unprintable content; adhesive binding and constructive criticism to all contributors; professional presentation of artwork clearly formatted; and respect of the artist’s original intentions of their creations.

Due to the ephemeral nature of any student body, fixtures in any university project will eventually move on. Such was the case after the fourth edition, when all staff but Charles moved on from ACM-IAU. He completed the fifth edition completely alone, an unrewarding situation after having worked with such an invaluable team… but providing valuable insight all the same. This situation would undoubtedly occur again. So he set about standardizing Mille Fontaines: providing a template with which anyone could in theory pick up off the street and produce the journal within the required time period.

Fortunately, the sixth edition saw the return of a former and quintessential staff member: Samantha (Sammy) Aldover. This return to a collaborative team spirit behind Mille Fontaines reinvigorated everyone involved. Sammy pushed for a higher standard of visual art and thematic visual design throughout each edition. She contracted peers from the Marchutz School of Art and Mediterranean Art Program as well as Masters in Art History or Masters in Visual Arts to create on-the-spot pieces which represented written word submissions or reflected the edition’s theme: a tradition which continues through this day.

The seventh edition was the first in which we at Mille Fontaines felt as if we were able to produce a result which held to the qualitative standard, without struggling to do so. It was this edition that garnered the attention of our Faculty Advisor: Dr. Marianne Maili, who herself had worked on the Iowa Review. From this point, through collaboration between students, staff, and faculty at ACM-IAU, we were inspired to expand beyond the Aix epicenter of Mille Fontaines and invite submissions from our learning centers in Florence, Barcelona, Madrid, and Tangiers. Who knows what will come next? I for one am excited to find out…