Economic clouds darken Lemon Sky

Lemon Sky Projects, a vanguard contemporary art gallery and publisher that has operated in a mid-Wilshire storefront for the last 15 months, has closed its doors. The final exhibition, featuring Bruce Yonemoto’s “Spaceship Earth” photographic prints and Christopher Haun’s mixed-media explorations of color and space, ended Saturday.

“The overhead is just too much in this economy,” says gallery owner Jane Hart. “Unlike a lot of other galleries, we put a lot of resources into the production, publication and framing of the work we show. When you add that to the usual costs of rent and insurance, it’s more than a young gallery with no financial backing can afford.”

But even as Lemon Sky has unloaded its bricks and mortar, it has reaffirmed its fine art publishing business -- in cyberspace. Limited-edition prints by Yonemoto, Jessica Bronson, Steven Criqui, Dara Friedman, T. Kelly Mason, Cindy Bernard and Tom Recchion are still available on the Web site: www.lemonskyprojects.com.

“The down side is that we had to close the gallery,” Hart says. “The up side is that we have an inventory of great work.”

-- Suzanne Muchnic