The life of the Sacramento State graduate can go in many different paths. Parenthood. Substitute teaching. Bartending. Vocalist in a blues band.
Rebecca Jasmin, who earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in anthropology from Sac State, has done all the above. It wasn't easy.
"I just lived there for a good decade," Jasmin said about Sac State. "It wasn't that bad."
She spent five years at Sac State working on her bachelor's degree. That wasn't the most difficult part of her education.
While working on her thesis, her primary consultant, Eric Hogan, was shot dead. Compounding that, her adviser was in semi-retirement the semester she was poised to graduate.
Hogan opened a basement shop in 1991 with two partners, Scott Sylvia and Nate Sponsler, which became American Graffiti in Sacramento. Jasmin described Hogan in her thesis as a hyperkinetic, contradictory and brilliant individual.
"He was just one of the most fascinating cats you could ever know," Jasmin said. "It turns out he is world famous for tattooing, and I didn't even know that when I ended up working with him. (He was) extraordinary, charismatic and a little dangerous. Apparently, it was the third attempt for someone trying to kill him."
She continued to pursue her topic in spite of losing a man that had become a close friend. She said their relationship reached different levels and that he was at times her therapist. Her school adviser encouraged her to examine the sociological ramifications.
"As a researcher, to be like right in the middle of everything when something major, major like that happens, and the social fallout, for an anthropologist is great," Jasmin said. "I would pass (on losing a friend) if I had my choice."
She struggled through and completed a 189-page thesis titled "Tattooing and the Management of Identity in a California Metropolis." She focused on tattooing as a rite off passage, spurred by middle class writers appropriating body art. Over an eight-year period from 1996 to 2004, Jasmin focused on American Graffiti and The Triangle Museum in Fort Bragg.
"Tattooing has been around through all of these fads and at the basis is an art and business form that is not able to be corporatized," Jasmin said. "That's really what I sort of got into more than the rites of passage. I mean, it is that for a lot of people, but there's a lot more than that going on."
Jasmin laughed recalling one story with Hogan. She once put on Tibetan monks chanting while in American Graffiti. Hogan responded by saying, "What the (expletive) is that hippy (expletive)?" Most tattoo artists, Jasmin said, don't want to hear people talk about their shakras.
"I think that because a lot of researchers have gone in with their own ideas to begin with, a lot of what the artists say isn't necessarily heard and conveyed," Jasmin said. "It seems that what's really important to a lot of the artists is maintaining independence, definitely maintaining a subculture."
Artists will not become a part of a corporation, Jasmin said.
"At heart most tattoo artists are outlaws, and have been, and there's a lot of reasons for that, that they're just fiercely, fiercely independent people," she said. "That makes it really neat. We're not going to have McTattooing on every corner."
Overlapping the completion of her thesis, in late 2003, Jasmin, drummer Rat-a-Tat-Pat Balcom, bassist Rikki Roehrich and lead guitarists Geoffrey Miller formed Jasmin & The Dirt Stars. The blues band regularly plays at the Blue Lamp on Alhambra Boulevard.
"She's had a group off and on," said Miller, who earned a bachelor's degree in history from Sac State. "Her project keeps on changing, and then I came into it."
Last March, the group released a 10-track album. Since then, Jasmin said, the band has the framework for five new songs that haven't been recorded in a studio. They plan to re-release the album with the extra songs and a bonus video.
Jasmin, who sings and writes the lyrics, said her topics range from guys, death, situations that don't work out and depression. She laughed before saying she's trying to write some more positive songs. Of course, it all depends on what comes to her.
"I'm attempting to write more about really relevant things," Jasmin said. "Politics are important to me. I'd like to write more about that. For the most part, I pretty much just write stuff that just comes into my head. There's sometimes when I'll wake up, grab my tape recorder and hum the song. There's songs that just kind of come that way. I wish that I had more control over topics."
Nate Miller can be reached at [email protected].
