Donor Spotlight: Fatima Lassar’s Legacy of Art and Impact

Fatima Lassar might say she doesn’t quite fit the mold of a traditional arts patron. “I don’t have the kind of story you want to tell,” she offered with a laugh. But here at Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, we believe otherwise. The truth is Fatima’s story is as vivid and layered as her artwork, an unexpected journey marked by creativity, generosity, and an unwavering belief in the power of art to shape lives and communities. And, as a recent stop on that journey, the LBC – and, by extension, the North Bay community – have become the beneficiaries of Fatima’s generosity and passion for the arts.

Born in Evanston, Illinois, Fatima showed an early interest in art, drawing constantly as a child and exploring everything from paint-by-numbers to wood burning. She earned a scholarship to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago while still in high school and later studied at the University of Iowa. In 1966, she and her husband moved to the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco at the height of the counterculture movement. “We saw the Grateful Dead and the Merry Pranksters right out our window,” she recalls. Soon, they moved to Bolinas and later to Novato, where Fatima embraced an unconventional lifestyle: communal living, artmaking, and a fierce commitment to social causes.

Throughout her life, Fatima has been a prolific and versatile artist. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she designed iconic rock posters, including one featured in the de Young Museum’s Summer of Love exhibition and the book The Art of Rock. Her work spans painting, etching, trompe l’oeil, mandalas, jewelry, and murals. She has painted enormous community murals, including one 170 feet long for Project Graduation, and storefront windows designed to bring beauty and meaning to everyday passersby.

“I never made a very good living from my art,” she says. “But I couldn’t stop making it.” Much of her work has been donated, including murals in shelters and illustrated posters for nonprofits. Currently she is framing 70 reproductions of her paintings to help decorate the new Lassar Health and Wellness Center for Recuperative Care, named in her honor by COTS (Committee on the Shelterless).

After a surprising financial windfall in 2021, Fatima made the bold decision to give it all away to nonprofits as legacy gifts. “Then I realized they’d all be hoping I’d die, so I decided I’d better give some of it while I’m alive,” she said chuckling. Her transformative gift to LBC was followed by the creation of the Fatima Lassar Visual Arts Fund, a first-of-its-kind resource to support LBC’s visual arts program and visual arts experiences for youth.

“There are not enough opportunities in schools for kids to create art. I was lucky to have taken classes at an art center when I was young, and my high school had a robust art curriculum. Every kid should have that chance.”

Thanks to her great generosity to LBC, generations of other local artists, community members, and local students will be invited to stop, look, and create—discovering, as Fatima did, that when art becomes part of your life, you never stop appreciating it.