It’s hard to put a name to what Eric Dean Spruth does for a living. His business card says “expressive therapist.” His master’s degree from the Art Institute of Chicago is in art therapy, and during his 11 years working with prisoners and detainees through Cermak Health Services (which serves Cook County Jail) he’s initiated and coordinated dozens of therapeutic exercises in art, poetry, music, and story writing. But his latest project isn’t art in the strictest sense–it’s horticulture. He grows herbs with women on the Sheriff’s Female Furlough program through the Department of Women’s Justice Services.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
He recently took three of his clients–Vicki Williams, Virginia Danieles, and Teri King–all serving their time at home with monitors, out to lunch at Pilsen’s May Street Cafe to enjoy the fruits of their labor. “I wanted the participants to see this one all the way through,” he says, “from weeding, tilling the soil, watering, growing herbs and flowers, to seeing the products put into use.”
For over a decade Spruth worked at the Cook County Courthouse Administration Building at 26th and California. He walked by the 10-by-40-foot plot of overgrown weeds that grew outside the building every day. Where others might see a sign of hopeless decay, Spruth saw an opportunity. “I always thought this land would make for a great horticulture program, if we ever got to do it and got someone to pay for it,” he says.
Right now he’s trying to get the word out to other chefs who might appreciate the herbs. He’s also in talks with the Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Health to plant additional gardens on now vacant lots. “I want to see acres of land,” he says. “I want to turn a bunch of useless weeds into a garden. When people can work on something like this and involve themselves in something bigger than themselves, that’s some cool shit.”
