Living in a state as rich in art as Maine, odds are you have at least one artist, art appreciator and/or collector on your holiday giving list. The three galleries featured this week offer actual art (“30th Annual Holiday Show” at Greenhut Galleries, through Jan. 25), books and other merchandise about art (“Space Pop-Up Shop” at Space, through Dec. 20), and both art and books (“The Wrong Tree” at Dunes, through winter, probably Mar. 1).

BOOKSTORE AS INSTALLATION

I start with Dunes because it is an interesting experiment, both in terms of shopping and gallery. It is a hybrid take on alternative venues that sell art, places enumerated in the exhibition statement as “lofts, basements, apartments—and bookstores” (this last being particularly apropos of the Dunes exhibition). Many people, and especially commercial galleries, tend to confer less legitimacy on these sorts of spaces or think of them as not serious in some way (i.e.: scrappy, non-professional upstarts). What Dunes has done is to essentially turn the whole gallery into an installation piece that is both bookstore and art exhibition space. The bookstore, in this case, actually becomes the art.

I admit to initially not subscribing fully to the exhibition statement’s premise, particularly its argument about the venue’s “force of authorship” — that is, the way we perceive art as having the imprimatur of a “serious” gallery or as being in some way less “legitimate” or important because it is exhibited in an alternative space that blends art with a more common sort of commerce. But the more time I spent in Dunes, the more I found myself completely seduced into the experiential nature of an installation. Everything became a part of what felt at times like a performance piece that encompassed the people in the space.

Interactivity is integral to the experience, of course, simply in the action of entering and perusing titles and art. However, in this atmosphere, a curiosity arose about the way people interact with books. Why are they drawn to a particular volume? What activates the moment when a reader decides a book in their hands deserves further consideration and they are impelled to sit down to spend more time with it?

There are also infinite observable levels of engagement. One man was sifting aggressively through the shelves, as if on a feverish quest for something specific. He was so intent on his mission that he was unaware that people were stepping back from the shelves to give him a wide berth for his task. Others casually flipped through pages without really looking. Some were bored. I felt like an anthropologist studying the behaviors, gestures and facial expressions induced by books, as well as the art on exhibit.

The selection of books also plays a role in how one experiences the show. It ranges far and wide, with such oddities as “Museum Quality Fish Taxidermy” and a book that explores rammed-earth architecture around the world, to first editions of rare and out-of-print volumes that would be prized by art scholars (and priced accordingly). I felt compelled to buy three bizarrely dissimilar books myself: volume one of “High Camp: A Gay Guide to Camp and Cult Films,” “Weight of the Earth: The Tape Journals of David Wojnarowicz” and “The Coming Insurrection,” which felt like a slim but timely volume we should probably all be toting around in our back pockets right now. I will return for more.

The selection, as it turns out, is at the heart of what Dunes describes as its “social contract.” Since its inception, the gallery has run a small bookstore out of its back room made up of titles contributed by artists who have exhibited there, most of which have something to do with the inspiration and/or art practice grounding their work. It is, says the statement “a more lasting way to mirror the ideas that flow through the space…”

Additionally, South Freeport-based Roger Conover — writer, curator and founding editor of the art and architecture program at MIT Press — has begun to deaccession his impressive collection of books and periodicals. Among his contributions to the show is a case that contains many publications about Black Mountain College, the hugely influential liberal arts school in North Carolina whose faculty and alumni include the Albers, Ruth Asawa, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, the de Koonings, Kenneth Noland, Robert Rauschenberg and Claire Zeisler, to name just a few. Among these is a complete collection of the peer-review publication Journal of Black Mountain College Studies.

The exhibition also asks us to consider the central role of books and art in culture and their ramifications far beyond it: their ability to inspire or inform works of art, the writings those art works generate in turn, the way art — whether visual, written or performed — introduces new ideas and changes attitudes.

And lest we forget, there is also art on display, some of it inspired by the readings of the artists in question: intriguing ceramics by Jared Buckhiester, paintings by Tessa Greene O’Brien and Peter Shear, photography by Eliot Porter, et alia.

VARIETY SHOW

Of the many holiday shows offered by galleries throughout the state, the granddaddy of them all is probably Greenhut Gallery’s, which has been running for three decades. As in the past, this exhibition presents works by all of the gallery’s stable of Maine artists. There is a predominance of painting, but the selection also includes ceramics by Jonathan Mess, sculpture by Stephen Porter and Mike Stiler, glass by Martin Kremer, woodcuts by the late Neil Welliver and a linocut by Daniel Minter, among others.

There is something for most any budget. Chris Benemen’s handsome “Dockside 5” monoprint is priced at $400, while at the higher end there are works by famous deceased artists such as John Imber (his “Cattails” is priced at $18,000) and David Driskell (whose ink-on-paper White Mask series works are $9,000, but whose “Blue Spruce” canvas you must inquire about to determine cost).

Styles also vary broadly. They encompass traditional seascapes by Philip Frey, Margaret Lawrence, Alison Rector, Alec Richardson and others, as well as abstract works by Tom Hall, Frederick Lynch and Sandra Quinn. They can be by turns bucolic (“Early Snow” by Nancy Morgan Barnes) and bitingly ironic (Tom Paiement’s “The Diplomat,” which has clear affinities with George Grosz), colorfully figurative (Ed Douglas’s “Summer III”) or monochromatic and hyperrealist (John Walley’s astonishing “Pine Cone”).

ALL ABOUT ART

Space’s annual pop-up also has something for everyone. Though it does not confine itself to books or art, the majority of what’s on sale here has a connection to artists who have exhibited at the gallery, received one of the Kindling Grants arranged through the gallery or been a Pickwick Independent Press member (a fine art printmaking shop on the premises).

We get, for instance, monographs by innovative photographer Rose Marasco and painter Sasha Braunig (both Space alums), as well as various signed children’s books by Samara Cole Doyon. On the art front, there are limited-edition prints and posters by various artists, watercolors by Gregory Jamie and weavings by Night Finch Studio/Mackenzie Maher-Coville.

Additionally, Space is offering handmade cards, adorable baby onesies, stickers and patches, and a music shop within a shop, which stocks vinyl records, cassettes and CDs from Maine-based record labels.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “The Wrong Tree”
WHERE: Dunes, 251 Congress St., Portland
WHEN: Through March 1
HOURS: Noon to 6 p.m. Thursday-Sunday (and by appointment)
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: info@dunes.fyi, dunes.fyi

WHAT: “30th Annual Holiday Show”
WHERE: Greenhut Galleries, 146 Middle St., Portland
WHEN: Through Jan. 25
HOURS: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: 207-772-2693, greenhutgalleries.com

WHAT: “Space Pop-Up Shop”
WHERE: Space, 534-538 Congress St., Portland
WHEN: Through Dec. 20
HOURS: Noon-6 p.m. Thursday-Friday, noon-4 p.m. Saturday
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: 207-828-5600, space538.org

Jorge S. Arango has written about art, design and architecture for over 35 years. He lives in Portland. He can be reached at: jorge@jsarango.com