When I was released from the behavioral health ward of a busy hospital, my first stop was the pharmacy, to pick up my mandated prescriptions. My second stop was self-prescribed: an art supply store. My experiences with physical art-making up until that point in my life had been sporadic and cursory; but at that moment, I felt it nothing less than necessity to delve deeper. One of the encouraged activities inside the psychiatric ward was collage. Something that, at first, seemed offensively elementary to me, became revolutionary—a tactile gift. A reminder of what my hands and mind were capable of in unison. Directly removing, altering, and integrating existing sources; to derive from and renew them into fresh meanings, meant also renewing myself. And if the inkling of that renewal was possible with just some old magazines, I could only listen to the electric draw of some unseen current telling me to create. Everyday. More. 

Only through this practice of generation and self-study have I begun to gather enough remedies to remain myself. Repave myself. Though I feel my healing is cyclical, I am writing to you now, seven years later, having accessed another sort of release. Having made some sort of art every single day since, I’m telling as a human humming with conviction, as an unprecedented whole.

~e.e. greer, editor

the first issue of repave is made possible by funding from the regional arts & culture council.