Eric is a trained artist, graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an undergraduate degree in fine art with a minor in Psychology and Philosophy, and a Masters Degree in Art Therapy. He has served as a professor at the Adler School of Professional Psychology Art Therapy program, and expressive art therapist within the Cook County Bureau of Health mental health services department of Cermak Health Services / Cook County Jail. Additionally, Eric has practiced privately in Chicago, collaborating with various mental health programs. Eric’s efforts have been featured and recognized as our former name of "Sacred Transformations" by many forms of media including WGN TV Morning News, National Public Radio and the Chicago Tribune, The National Health Care, WTTW City Talk, and the Chicago Reader. Spruth has received many awards and recognition in his field both as an artist and an expressive art therapist. While he has a portfolio of tattoo designs available for those who feel the need for outside inspiration, such tools are only used as a foundation within the art therapy/tattoo augmentation process of Sacred Transformations.
“I design custom works with each person, discussing what the tattoo will mean to them, in order to create an image that becomes a source of daily inspiration to maintain a life of sobriety, a life that includes a commitment to the welfare of children, to family, to the community and for some, to God!” says Eric, “Whatever will help to keep our clients on the right track.”
"Choosing a new tattoo to express our individuality, as a rite of passage, or a symbol of evolving consciousness, can be a powerful way to affirm personal evolution," Eric says. "It is a concrete way of letting go of the past and making commitments to a better future.”
Even more than an individual psychological experience, he practices tattoo as a potentially transformative spiritual experience. By approaching the process as ritual, Eric feels we have an “opportunity to explore our psychology in three dimensions and involve our sense of theater, aesthetics, and symbolism, as well as providing a powerful focus for spiritual energy.”
To reach out and email Eric, please click here:
Chief Executive Officer
Eric Dean Spruth
It’s been a long and winding road for founder Eric Dean Spruth, one that has spanned an evolution from childhood doodling, mad boy, to a deeply spiritual/psychological professional artist. This background combined with a personal approach to tattoos he has today drives Tattoo Art Therapy's practices of the services of therapeutic tattoo removals and cover-ups, art therapy and laser tattoo removal.
Eric and his clients share a deep investment in both the process and the product of a tattoo. Spruth considers the art therapy process, including tattooing, an act of empowerment and a tool for the expression of intrinsic experiences.