Lamar is a muse for the ages, a lens through which we can explore the love within both our hearts and others'.
Check out the video and photos below.
What is your ideal office?
Lots of windows looking onto the streets of Midtown right next to my favorite fabric stores on 38th. I love Midtown, with all its shameless consumerism and business suits – sounds peaceful.
What is the magic word?
I don’t believe in them. I believe in just making it happen with all you’ve got.
Where did you have your first kiss?
A sand dune, or maybe a redwood tree stump. I can’t remember.
What was the last thing to make you cry?
I’ve been crying a lot lately — I used to never cry. It just happens randomly, like the other day, I don’t know why, I guess I just felt lost.
What — or who — brings you to your knees?
If I’m on a stage or the dance floor and the music bangs, I can’t help but put on a show. If you aren’t on your knees at some point while performing – that’s not enough passion for me.
If you were to have a body part cast in bronze, which would it be and why?
My whole body as it is now. Then I want to bury it inside my coffin instead of my old body when I die.
What is your vice?
I’ve had many, and I’ve also quit many. Compulsively online shopping is a current one.
What is your most precious memory related to music?
When Harmen played at my last runway show.
What, where, and with who was the best night out you ever had?
Clubbing in the Dominican Republic with my boyfriend's family, CocoBongo.
What is the sexiest sound? Taste? Texture?
Taste? None. Sound? Voice breathing into your ear. Texture? Skin.
What disgusts you?
Fast fashion culture overproducing cheap clothes with the lowest quality materials and unoriginal designs.
Where below 14th street do you go to find peace?
I’m always below 14th street so, I guess my balcony. I quit chain smoking so now I just go out there and sit and vape. It’s kind of the same.
What is the most nostalgic item in your home?
My grandmother was a seamstress, when she passed away recently I got all of her sewing supplies - that’s super special to me. The LA Xpress collages covering my walls.
What is one trend you wish you hadn’t participated in?
It all led me to where I’m at now, so I don’t look back and regret.
Which words make your heart beat faster?
The cliche ones. Nothing original.
How would you define your community?
Talented, funny as fuck, smart as hell. Who do you design for? People who are inherently unique. People who want to stand out. People who are bold.
Outside the venue, people gathered. I've been at Public Records before, for listening parties, not exactly anything having to do with food. That night, I was there for Pierce Abernathy’s dinner, part of his Spring pop-up tour with Aerthship — an eco-art collective bridging the gap between Earth and culture.
The intimate party celebrated fashion, food, music, and art with the planet in mind. Pierce created a cozy living room vibe with a carefully curated guest list of close friends.
Pierce sourced locally grown ingredients from a variety of urban farms, including Farm.One, Oko Farms, Smallhold, and Lani’s Farm. The farms specialize in hydroponics, aquaponics, and mushroom cultivation, supplemented by farmers’ market finds. The menu featured a mix of savory and sweet dishes, with highlights such as fried mushrooms with stinging nettle/ramp sauce, asparagus with marigold sabayon, and rhubarb fennel olive oil cake for dessert.
A lineup of talented DJs, including Naomi Asa and 063N13 b2b set the mood. They spun vinyl classics from Mr. Fingers and Prince to Chez Damier and Kim English. The guests, which included artists, food creators, fashion designers, and photographers, enjoyed the music while savoring in the yummy dishes. I ran into Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada and Taofeek Abijako of Head of State and other instagram mutuals I hadn’t seen in a while, friends of Pierce's who share a love for food.
Delicious food, top-notch music, sustainability and support to local urban farms. By bringing together like-minded individuals from different industries, Pierce and the Aerthship collective are creating a new subculture that prioritizes sustainability and connection with the planet. Who knows what their next project will be, but it’s sure to be just as tasteful as this one.
In its latest installment, a launch party for Madeline Cash's collection of short stories, "Earth Angel," readers stood on a roof-like terrace above attentive listeners, sharing journal passages, short stories, and anecdotal recollections — illuminated by the light of their iPhones. "The focus of the series is to take readings out of traditional contexts and test the limits of the literary paradigm. I typically select artists who work in different mediums to read alongside more obscure writers because that's where subversion lies." the LA native notes.
What began in a Pollo a la Brasa parking lot, due to being thrown out of Johnson's studio apartment prior, Factory Made's first reading was a testament to the urgency of establishing space for writers or anyone who has something to say, though surpassing the means available. Since its inception, the reading series has blurred the line between afterparty and reading circle, where a story about office banter or capitalistic exhaustion meets the blare of a DJ speaker. This underground disposition makes sense for the bodies in attendance, where sleaze is in and clean-cut is a faux pas. "My reading series–Factory Made–is a cross-genre pollination of dyslexic debutantes, transgressive twinks, ketafiend starlets, and the like," Johnson explains.
Making way through the crowd obscured by cigarette smoke and balenci city bags at Factory Made's recent affair, there's an energy that can't be felt elsewhere. The house party contextualizes each reading, where at any moment, the police could shut it down, but it almost feels like that's the plan the whole time— a party worth shutting down. As figures move in tandem to hyper rap and electronic deep cuts, DJs, like Boiler Room rostered Gbenga, play mix after mix, where the previous reading about a singular testicle and a kale salad fades in and out of your mind.
"Factory Made was created to disrupt contemporary literature," Johnson adds to the end of the Google Doc. With intentions of keeping the reading series as fluid and raw as possible, intellectual prowess and linear ways of thinking are subdued, allowing the medium to act as a vessel rather than a rulebook.
While many writers' introduction to the craft has been academic exposure or countless nights reading as a child, Johnson began exploring the medium only recently, informing the intention behind Factory Made, where anyone can write. Though the sentiment is necessary, the Los Angeles-based multi-hyphenate has an unmatched wit and way with words, where a run-on sentence is a universe of its own. Because of this, married with a knack for hosting and general openness to people and their perspectives, Jasmine Johnson succeeds in creating space for writers to be weird, unfiltered, and individual, exemplifying what the Los Angeles literary scene can — and will be.
