Lighting the Room, Holding the Line

Lighting the Room, Holding the Line

Harun Coffee, Leimert Park, and Moving Forward

The reopening of Harun Coffee feels bigger than a refresh. It feels like a continuation.

From early on, this project was rooted in collaboration. Chace Infinite reached out to me at the beginning stages to be part of shaping the space, inviting me into a conversation about how design, atmosphere, and culture could work together inside Harun’s listening room/speakeasy. That early trust mattered. It allowed the lighting to be conceived not as an afterthought, but as a foundational element of the room itself.

Tucked inside the space is a listening room and speakeasy, a place designed for slowing down, tuning in, and gathering with intention. For this room, I created a series of custom lighting works that live somewhere between sculpture, design, and atmosphere. They’re functional, yes, but they’re also expressive. They set the tone. They hold the room.

This project marks an important moment for me. While glass has been the foundation of my practice, lighting is becoming a deeper focus as I move into 2026 and beyond. It opens up new territory, one that sits at the intersection of art, design, architecture, and lived experience.

Lighting design, and furniture more broadly, is a space where Black designers are still vastly underrepresented, especially at the level of authorship and legacy. That absence matters. Representation matters not just in who occupies the room, but in who designs it, who shapes the environment, and who gets to define what “good design” looks and feels like.

For me, stepping into lighting and furniture isn’t about chasing a trend. It’s about expanding the language of my work and placing it in dialogue with spaces where culture actually happens. Places where people gather, listen, think, and connect.

Leimert Park is one of those places.

This neighborhood has long been a cultural heartbeat for Black Los Angeles, a site of creativity, resistance, and community-building. Harun Coffee itself sits on historic ground. Decades ago, this same location housed the Brockman Gallery, a foundational Black-owned art gallery that, starting in the late 1960s, helped launch and sustain the careers of countless Black artists when few other institutions would.

That lineage isn’t lost on me.

Installing work here means contributing to something larger than a single project. It means honoring the past while actively shaping the future. It means understanding that design can be a form of stewardship, a way of holding space for culture to continue evolving.

The lighting in the Harun listening room is playful, bold, and intentional. It draws from my Modern Funk sensibility, but it also responds directly to the room, the sound, and the energy of the space. It’s less about spectacle and more about presence.

As I move forward, I’m thinking more about environments. About furniture, lighting, and objects that don’t just exist on their own, but work together to shape how people feel in a space. How they move through it. How they remember it.

This is about legacy, but not in an abstract sense. It’s about contributing tangible work to places and communities that have given so much. It’s about building a body of work that lives in the world, not just on pedestals or screens.

Harun Coffee’s reopening is a reminder that spaces can be both rooted and forward-looking. I’m grateful to be part of that story, and excited about where this next chapter in my practice is heading.