Epiphania Sacred Arts
is a habitat for life-giving
& life-sustaining arts & practices.
Please visit our site often for updated digital reflections, art galleries, offerings, and events, such as open art studios, retreats, workshops, presentations, and other offerings.
About Epiphania
“Our altar, the world.
Our canvas, the universe.”
~ Carrie Rehak
In 1990, Carrie wrote a pithy artist statement that still holds true today: “My paintings are my prayers.” Even works that depict seemingly “secular” subjects—seas, skies, light, shadow—are, to her, sacred. They contemplate light in its many forms: natural and supernatural, fleeting and eternal, revealed in and through the contours of form, human and other-than-human.
In 2000, she opened Epiphania—a sacred studio and gathering space for making, teaching, and spiritual exploration. In 2010, following a life-altering experience, she relocated her studio to beloved Crockett, an unincorporated town, where the Carquinez Strait meets the San Pablo Bay. The transformation of the space—from storage room to sanctuary—was both literal and metaphorical. Inspired by wayside shrines and santuarios, the studio, was designed to be ever-evolving.
In 2020, as the world shifted during the pandemic—and in response to a deeper internal metamorphosis—Carrie made the painful yet clear decision to close the physical studio in Crockett. Where is Epiphania now? To quote Kit White in 101 Things to Learn in Art School: “The studio is more than a place to work: it is a state of mind.”
Soul Grove Sanctuary and &&& are outgrowths of Epiphania, and byproducts of day-to-day personal and communal experience and practice as well as proximate and remote, sacred and secular, ancient and future-oriented inspirations and influences, from restorative practices and performance art to permaculture and new cosmology. Although they are reflective of Carrie’s rootedness in the Catholic tradition - or, more accurately, in Catholicity (a la Ilia Delio) - they are primarily fruits of friendships, with pilgrims, seekers, imagineers, innovators, change-makers, and communion with the living world. It is in hope - what French philosopher Gabriel Marcel describes as the "memory of the future"—that we offer these digital and in-person sacred offerings—reflections and practices—that we may be more just, more merciful, more inclusive, more connected, more vibrant, more engaged, more loving, more whole — that is, more fully alive.
About Carrie Rehak
Carrie realizes her creative, intellectual, and spiritual aspirations through a range of interconnected modes and media—including ecospirituality, permaculture, cosmology, restorative practices, nonviolence, theopoetics, and the arts.
As a Work that Reconnects and Restorative Justice practitioner and facilitator, Carrie has been weaving both modes into her work, and personal and community life, since 2013, when she attended a life-changing training with Joanna Macy, Anne Symens-Bucher, and other community members at Canticle Farm, in Oakland, California. Along with the Work that Reconnects, Carrie finds life giving Nonviolent Communication (NVC), which she also began training in and practicing in 2013.
Her approach – what Carrie finds most enlivening, transformative, fruitful, and authentic to who she is – is "art for life's sake": ethical aesthetics, theopoetics, and art/life, thanks in large part to the influence of such luminaries as Deborah J. Haynes, Linda Mary Montano, Maren Hassinger, and other contemporary visionaries who attempt “to dissolve the boundaries between art and life" (Montano), sacred and secular, personal and political, process and product, and ritual and performance.
Carrie holds both an M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology, with a concentration in the arts, from the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley. She has held positions in nonprofit leadership and as an instructor and director of programs in educational settings—forums that continually ground her ideas in meaningful, real-world practice.
Her quest is one of meaning: what is the relationship between our experience and our reflections on—and expressions of—that experience? And how does this relationship bear on personal, social, and ecological responsibility? Carrie believes that how we give voice, form, and presence to what we live through—whether through words, images, ritual, or collective practice—shapes how we care for ourselves, one another, and the Earth. Above all, she is committed to formal and informal communities of makers, seekers, and learners—as creative agents of transformation, liberation, and flourishing.
Background & Credentials
Academic Foundations
Ph.D. and M.A. in Theology
Graduate Theological Union, BerkeleyB.F.A. in Fine Arts
Academy of Art, San Francisco
Professional Training & Certifications
Certified Restorative Justice / Restorative Practioner
Simon Fraser UniversityCertified Work that Reconnects Facilitator
Permaculture Design Certification — in progress
Certified Life Coach (CLC, PNLP/MNLP, CHP, ICF Credential) — in progress
Certified Hypnosis Practitioner
Fundamentals of Advanced Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto (2013–2014), and other trainings with Eric Greenleaf, Ph.D., and others, including Certified Hypnosis Practitioner the iNLP Center—ongoing
Certified Dependable Strengths Facilitator / Gifts Discnerment
Spiritual & Somatic Modalities
Spiritual Direction
Training at Jesuit School of Theology (JST) and over 20 years spiritual direction experience in individual and group settings, including university and residential renewal programs, e.g., School of Applied Theology / Graduation Theological Union (SAT-GTU) and Jesuit Renewal Program / Jesuit School of Theology-Santa Clara University (JST-SCU)Retreat Design & Facilitation
Over 20 years creating transformative retreats focused on spiritual growth, healing, and reconnection, in body, mind, and spirit.
Key Influences & Ongoing Practices
The Work That Reconnects / Deep Ecology / Systems Theory
Training with Joanna Macy and Terry and Anne Symens Bucher, et al, grounded in deep ecology, systems thinking and being, engaged spirituality, and collective action.Cosmology
Cosmological and evolutionary spirituality, inspired by Teilhard de Chardin, Brian Swimme, and Ilea Delia.
Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
Training and active practice in empathic, needs-based communication.Permaculture Design & Ecospirituality
Honoring Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share; integrating regenerative design with spiritual practice.
Decolonization and Anti-Racist Praxis
Informed by ongoing learning in trauma healing, decolonization, racial justice, and ancestral repair. Rooted in the belief that healing is relational and liberation is collective.
Trauma-Informed Recovery
Inspired by principles grounded in Twelve-Step traditions and attuned to the complexities of generational and social trauma, I seek to support healing as an embodied, relational and reflective process—open to each person’s unfolding journey and the enduring, life-giving impulse that guides recovery.
Art/Life, Theopoetics & Ethical Aesthetics
Inspired by the vision of luminaries, such as Linda Mary Montano, Marina Abramovic, Cecilia Vicuña, bell hooks, and Deborah J. Haynes, who blur the boundaries between the sacred and the secular, the personal and the social, and the ethical and the aesthetic.