Sporting a schoolgirl look in a brown turtleneck sweater over a short tartan skirt, Alison Villani oversees Local 188 with cool, steely calm. It’s impossible to say where her energy comes from. Besides being part owner of the 6-month-old gallery and restaurant on State Street in Portland, Villani teaches art at Portland High School, and she’s an artist preparing a show of her own drawings and sculpture.

Like Villani, Local 188 has style, from the chocolate-and-olive checkerboard floor to the menu tucked in an antique playbook with yellowed pages. The food is prepared by Jay Villani, Alison’s husband, and it’s a mosaiclike array of Spanish tapas: inexpensive, appetizer-sized dishes such as marinated olives, mushrooms with garlic, or artichokes steamed in saffron-and-butter broth.

The food plays second fiddle to the art, however, and in many ways Local 188 is typical of the new Portland galleries. It’s run in the collective style by a group of energetic young investors who are artists with other jobs. It’s an atmosphere where edgy, gritty art is allowed — the October show included “bungled taxidermy” by the Rev. Matt Anderson. (One sculpture was a glossy collage of twigs, wire and oil in a coffin, complete with eerie soundtrack.)

“There are a huge number of great artists in the community, and there have been so few galleries to show their work,” said Duane Patricio, a partner in the fledgling Hay Gallery, above Starbucks in the flatiron-style Hay Building, a Portland landmark.

The new galleries are clustered around the Portland Museum of Art, in the city’s official arts district, the neighborhood where State and High streets intersect with Congress. Theories for the boom abound. In part, it’s the healthy economy, the extra cash that’s around for nonessential items such as art. It’s also the nearby presence of the Maine College of Art, which grew into the old Porteous department store building four years ago. As more art students graduate, more choose to stay around.

“They’re creating opportunities for nontraditional artists,” said Mark Bessire, director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at MECA.

Maine’s largest city has developed a regional and national reputation as an “arts town.” Portland ranked fourth in the 1998 book “The 100 Best Small Art Towns in America.”

“There’s that synergy that develops, the sense of something happening,” said Deb Krichels, executive director of the Portland Arts and Culture Alliance. “It is the rising tide that floats all boats. When a reputation develops, it helps all the galleries.”

Patricio, a well-known wood craftsman, and his wife, Laura Fuller, a glass artist, originally wanted the downtown space for a sunny studio and showroom. The gallery concept evolved, and the bright, window-lined room is crammed with mirrors and wood furniture, coffee-colored abstract paintings by Michael Libby and Eric Brown’s buttery geometrics, hung over broad, gold floorboards.

Wearing cool, squarish black glasses and a headband, Patricio sometimes can be found building frames on the sidewalk next to the gallery, across from the art museum. “Twelve years ago this was not a vibrant area, and now it’s alive,” he said. “The museum has been very helpful, sending people over.”

A brochure developed at the Institute of Contemporary Art this summer guides museum visitors to nearby galleries. Established gallery owners in the neighborhood also have offered support. June Fitzpatrick has labored seven years on High Street, and when she hosts openings at her place, she shares her guests with the Gallery at 108 High Street, a new space on the second floor of the gray brick building next door.

Peter Bals, a founding member at 108 High Street, said Fitzpatrick has come to every opening at the new gallery.

“There are never enough galleries, really, and one reason is that it’s hard making a go of it,” Fitzpatrick said. “I feel it’s important to give every encouragement, because their energy adds immeasurably to what’s here.”

Two years ago, Fitzpatrick opened a second, “alternative” space around the corner on Congress Street. She describes it as “a little more raw, a bit industrial, New York-y.” The slate floor has pieces missing, and the recent show of abstract work by Elizabeth Cashin McMillen was a knockout.

So far, there’s room in Portland for gallery experiences both New York-y and otherworldly. To find Radiant Light, a photography gallery right across the street from June Fitzpatrick Alternative, one must ride an elevator (with an elevator man!) up to the third floor of the Congress Building and wander the narrow, zigzagging corridors in search of a paper sign taped to the wall.

Maybe the ultimate alternative is the Danforth Gallery’s virtual exhibition-in-progress at www.maineartistsspace.org. For those who like to art-surf in person, the Danforth also has added a new third-floor space, Gallery 313, dedicated to midcareer artists.

Like the Danforth, the Gallery at 108 High Street is a collective, the 18-month-old baby of a group of 15 artists. Each pays monthly dues of $50 to cover rent and utilities.

Several founding members are recent graduates of Maine College of Art, some of them nontraditional students who went back to school in their 30s and 40s. The gallery was a way to keep their community together after graduation, and their school associations gave them a ready audience.

Bals was one of two artists with studios in the High Street building when a downstairs neighbor, a computer business, moved out. He organized an impromptu show in the space, which went well, and the gallery grew out of it.

“We envisioned it being for people who are just beginning, building up a body of work, who aren’t quite ready to approach other galleries,” he said. “It’s a long, slow process, but we definitely are establishing a following.”

The gallery’s mailing list has grown to 500 names, and a group of patrons — regular buyers — has emerged. The show for October, “Sanctuary,” featuring collage by Kathleen Boldt and paintings by Bals, was an elegant oasis, with covered windows, water trickling over rocks and lit white candles.

At Hinge, open a year on Congress Street, the collective gallery concept involves an entire family: Waterville-born sisters Deborrah, Cynthia and Elizabeth Jabar and Elizabeth’s husband, Sean Harris. All have other jobs; Deborrah’s a paralegal, Cynthia’s an author and illustrator, Sean’s a free-lance photographer, and Elizabeth teaches at MECA. Even the Jabar parents help out, opening up shop for their daughters one day a week.

“It’s a labor of love, and it’s sheer will that’s kept it going,” Deborrah Jabar said. “It takes the four of us. We feed off each other. When one of us says, `I don’t know if I can do this,’ the other three say, `Yes you can.”‘

Hinge has built an audience — and a reputation for community involvement — by hosting frequent gallery talks by artists, poetry readings, even a puppet show benefit for a journalist on death row.

Cultivating clients should remain a focus for the new galleries, said Bessire, the director at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

“Staying power is harder than opening power,” he said. “The most important step is developing collectors of contemporary art. That’s the only way it’s going to last.”

Some newer Portland galleries:

The Gallery at 108 High Street, second floor, noon-5 p.m. Thursday, Friday, Saturday

Gallery 313 at the Danforth Gallery, 34 Danforth St., 775-2708.

Hay Gallery, Congress Street above Starbucks, 773-2513, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Hinge, 576A Congress St., 761-9552, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, noon-5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Local 188, 188 State St., 761-7609, 4-10 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday.

Radiant Light, third floor, Congress Building, 252-7258, noon-6 p.m. Saturday.

June Fitzpatrick Alternative, 662 Congress St., 772-1961, noon-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.

Maine Photo Co-op, 100 Oak St., 774-1900.

3 Fish Gallery, 377 Cumberland Ave., 773-4773.