Nathan Lasnik

Nathan Lasnik
1917—2010

Nathan Lasnik, 93, of Grants Pass died of natural causes on Aug. 17, 2010 at his home.

The committal ceremony preceding interment was conducted by the U.S. Air Force on Thursday Aug. 26 with full military honors at Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent, WA.

Lasnik was born on March 8, 1917, in Akron, Ohio. He was the eldest of four sons from Russian Jewish immigrants who came through Ellis Island near the turn of the 20th century. He was raised and educated in Cleveland, OH. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in February 1941, and eventually was trained and stationed at Ft. Lewis, WA. He married Toby Glasburg of Canton, OH, in Tacoma, WA. He earned the rank of Staff Sergeant in 1942 and served in the Pacific Theater on Saipan. While on Saipan, his division became part of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Nathan earned various decorations for his service through the end of WW II and was honorably discharged on September 15, 1945.

Following WW II, Lasnik returned to Cleveland to pursue his lifelong passion for art and media production. His formal education included courses at the prestigious Cleveland Institute of Art. He became a master lithographer, working at the famous Morgan-Lithograph (feature film advertising) and Continental Lithograph production studios, as well as Addressograph-Multigraph. He later finished his active professional career with 15 years at American Greetings Corporation. Several years after retiring, he moved to Grants Pass in 1987.

Lasnik was an accomplished contemporary artist who specialized in transparent watercolors and acrylics. His work won numerous jury-refereed awards and was exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museums of Art in Youngstown, Denver, Canton, and Oklahoma. He described his unique technique as 'extensionary art'. In Nathan's works, letter and word forms were extended as scaffolds for the final abstract imagery. As Nathan himself described it: 'More than anything else, non-representational paintings mean an extension of my experiences and inner journeys into the regions of letter and word symbols, and become a means of interpreting the world in this way…creating a reflective, idiosyncratic vision of our chaotic world and giving it a coherent, evocative, and synthetic sense of ostensible order.' One of his local community contributions was to teach art to local elementary school students.

His son, Vincent, was his primary caregiver for over two years since Nathan suffered a stroke in 2008. Vincent currently lives in Grants Pass and works as a writing instructor and Academic Skills tutor at Rogue Community College (Redwood Campus). Lasnik is also survived by two brothers, Mort and Jack, and two daughters, Heidi and Maidee, as well as six grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren.