by Emma Riva
Whatever the smallest gallery you’ve seen art in is, Almost Gallery likely has it beat. Founder Alli Lemon, an artist, curator, and educator originally from Memphis, had been looking for a new way to curate exhibitions after successfully running maybeblue, an a garage gallery that started as all the best things do, as an excuse to throw a good party. She later housed exhibitions in the back of her truck after the pandemic shuttered maybeblue. But Pittsburgh was a new chapter for her, and she hadn’t yet found a place to show art. Until her housemate found a dollhouse on the streets of Bloomfield.
“My own practice deals with domestic spaces and the dollhouse, being very narrow and three-storied, reminded me a lot of the houses you see in Bloomfield. I thought at some point I’d make it into a piece,” Lemon remembered.
She later connected with artist Andrew W. Allison at Field Day in Lawrenceville for an informal interview series Allison was putting together. They got to talking about the dollhouse Lemon’s housemate had found, and Allison was immediately interested. His work is both whimsical and highly technical. If anyone could exhibit in a dollhouse, it would be him. “I’ve been making miniature installations since around, 2011 or 12? That being said, I haven’t had an opportunity to show in an old dollhouse before. The entire genre of art I make could be described as domestic-haunted, seemed right for me,” he explained.
That conversation brought Almost Gallery to life and made the basis for its inaugural exhibition, Spend the Night, which featured Britt Ransom, Allison, and Matthias Rushin. “The installation I made [for Spend the Night] is a self portrait. Considering my physicality as an object for meditation. Considering how and why I form my body and how my body is formed by nature and others,” Allison said.
Spend The Night debuted in November of 2025 as a part of Lemon’s solo show at (___) in Wilkinsburg. Lemon found each of the artists used the space in their own way. “[Andrew]’s work is seemingly light hearted, but often dealing with heavy subject matter. He also has no material fidelity and moves from medium to medium. All of that applies to Britt and Mathias as well. Overall, I tend to lean towards work that’s strange materially,” Lemon said.
Spaces like Lemon’s and (___) show a different vision of what an art space can do, neither a commercial or blue-chip gallery nor a not-for-profit community gallery. Lemon’s vision for Almost Gallery uses the gallery itself as part of the concept. Where some galleries curate based on ideas about quality or taste, Lemon’s curatorial concept self-selects for artists who will enjoy making work in it.
More and more, it seems like Pittsburgh is an ideal place for work focused on materials and innovative uses of space, rather than simple white walls. At a moment when the general populace feels so disconnected from each other, tactile concepts like Almost allow viewers to focus in and connect better to art and to themselves.
“The number one thing I learned from maybeblue is how much artists crave weird spaces that take themselves seriously,” Lemon said. “It provides opportunity and exposure without high outside pressure.” Other post-industrial cities like Chicago have embraced artist-run or DIY spaces, and Pittsburgh is a fertile ground for more like Almost Gallery. Lemon also sells work at low price points with full profits for the artists, with the hopes that smaller pieces at lower prices will attract more people to start to buy art, something she saw happen at maybeblue.
“For me, a gallery should always be an ongoing project,” Lemon explained. That impulse is the origin of the name “almost,” which Lemon sees as meaning “very nearly” or “not complete,” rather than less than. “I enjoyed how it suggests smallness without calling itself small. Like when you’re a kid and you look forward to turning another year older, ‘I’m almost five,’ I’m almost in 1st grade,’ et cetera,” she said. The name also has her intiials in it, which she said “felt cheeky in a way that suits the project.”
Lemon has the gallery’s first solo show of Anne Chen’s work planned for February of 2026—”Ive been obsessed with her assemblage alchemy since I first saw it,” Lemon added—but there will be a new group show opening on January 9.
“My intention is to have Pittsburgh artists in every show, but mix in my broader network. I’ve moved around a lot and friends being friends, or becoming fans of each other, is one of my favorite things about the art world,” she said. She will also be taking the gallery on road trips with her, echoing back to the days of using her truck as a mobile art space.
It’s become increasingly more difficult to do anything just for fun in 2026’s world. Everything seems optimized to maximum convenience, productivity, and efficiency, whether it’s making art, making out, or making money. Almost Gallery is a reminder that life can just be fun, sometimes. Artists and the scenes around them are the sites of serious innovation, but that innovation comes from the freedom to play.
“I’m working with many who don’t usually work small and I hope they feel free to play and make weird choices. For viewers, I hope they feel a similar sense of wonder, that they question what makes art “important” beyond scale or market value,” Lemon said. “The art world can feel overbearing, I hope this is place that reminds us why we got in the game. It can still be fun.”
Almost Gallery’s next exhibition, Inanimate Pace, features Saige Baxter, Joshua Challen Ice, Matthew Constant, and Clarine Lee presenting work that brings “life to the still and reminds us to slow down” at 5800 Alderson Street on January 9 at 6PM.
This month’s articles are produced with support from the Frick Pittsburgh in conjunction with their landmark exhibition The Scandinavian Home: Landscape and Lore, running through January 19. Get cozy as the seasons change with David and Susan Warner’s collection of paintings, tapestries, and sculptures from around the Nordic region. Tickets now on sale.
PETRICHOR 
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