J&L Books: Reading Room
For ICA LA’s Bookshelf Residency, J&L celebrates 25 years of publishing and welcomes you to the Annex Gallery project titled J&L Books: Reading Room. Visitors are encouraged to browse the J&L library which includes work by Helon Habila, Miriam Toews, Adam Gilders, Gregory Halpern, Sara Perovic, Harry Smith, Manuel DeLanda, Will Brown, Mike Mandel, Chrissy Piper, Bruce Conner, Craig Taylor, Sam Lipsyte, Susanne Kippenberger, Corita Kent, Lisa Kereszi, Gus Powell, Amy O’Neill, Michael Northrup, Elisabeth Tonnard, Corin Hewitt, Octavian Esanu, Mike Slack, Michael Schmelling, Shoboshobo, Amie Barrodale, David Shrigley, Shary Boyle, Marcel Dzama, Paul Davis, Dame Darcy, Myles Langlois, M. Dumontier, Neil Farber, Jason Logan, David Berman, Lenka Clayton, and more.
As part of the exhibition, book recommendations may be offered by taking a pencil and writing the title and author onto a blank spine on the wall of the reading room, or on a blank wooden book on the shelves. The library will grow with visitor suggestions.
J&L Books is a non-profit Atlanta / New York based publisher of artists’ books, founded in 2000 by Jason Fulford and Leanne Shapton.
J&L is committed to making new books by or about contemporary artists.
Jason Fulford is an artist, educator, and co-founder of J&L Books, where he is publisher, editor, and book designer. His own published works of photography include Sunbird; Crushed; Raising Frogs For $$$; The Mushroom Collector; Hotel Oracle; Contains: 3 Books; The Medium is a Mess; and Clayton’s Ascent. His solo exhibition The Mushroom Collection was presented at Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2009. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. He is based in Brooklyn, New York City, and Scranton, PA.
Leanne Shapton is an artist, writer, and co-founder of J&L books. Her published works include Was She Pretty?; Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry; and Guestbook: Ghost Stories. In her youth, Shapton was a competitive swimmer who competed in the 1988 and 1992 Canadian Olympic trials, an experience she describes in her autobiographical book Swimming Studies, originally released in 2012 and currently re-released in March 2025. She also creates illustrations for book covers and feature films. She is the art editor of the New York Review of Books. She is based in New York City.