Coming Soon . . . : Art: The county museum’s upcoming Mexican art extravaganza has inspired a number of local exhibits.

Luis Ituarte was thinking of all this Mexican art, spread across the city and documenting the heritage and future of Mexican culture, as a very powerful message.

“There is a tremendous amount of gain for North Americans in this partnership, and that gain is cultural,” he said. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s upcoming “Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries” has already inspired galleries in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere to mount related exhibits.

Ituarte, guest curator of the Lankershim Arts Center’s show of works by new artists from Puebla, Mexico, said these programs may even have a subtle impact on the proposed free-trade agreement between Mexico and the United States. “This brings the best of Mexico to the minds of people, to see they are making a partnership with a very rich culture.”

Ituarte’s “Es Tierra: La Nueva Escuela Poblana” exhibit at the North Hollywood gallery is one of two notable programs opening today that maintain deep roots in the Mexican culture. At the McGroarty Arts Center in Tujunga, three Los Angeles-area artists show their works in “Paisaje.”

And at the Cal State Northridge Art Galleries is the “Nelson Rockefeller Collection of Mexican Folk Art,” which continues through Oct. 26.

“I would like to see more of this kind of effort citywide because it’s created a bridge” with other galleries, said Joan de Bruin, director of the McGroarty and Lankershim galleries.

The works featured at the Lankershim Arts Center come from Puebla, a medium-sized city surrounded by volcanoes. The city once rivaled Mexico City as a center for art and culture. Puebla’s old school of artists often focused on landscapes and natural still-lifes, a direction that the show’s 11 artists still manifest.

“The old school of Puebla is very well-represented” at the LACMA show, Ituarte said. “So what we wanted to do was show what has evolved from that.”

The show’s environmental theme, Ituarte added, was inspired by the work of artist Jose Villalobos, whose work incorporates real earth in his natural pigments. The Villalobos works in the Lankershim show almost seem to have been cut directly from adobe walls, combining warm earth tones and rugged texture.

“People, intellectuals, are now looking more at Latin American art, the personality, the character,” said Juan Sordo, whose Puebla gallery represents the show’s artists. “It’s very strong and very creative.”

The Puebla exhibition continues through Nov. 15 at the Lankershim Arts Center, 5108 Lankershim Blvd. The gallery is open noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, and 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays. For information, call (818) 989-9066.

The influence of the LACMA show, which opens Oct. 6 and continues through Dec. 29, manifests itself differently in the McGroarty Arts Center’s “Paisaje” landscape exhibit. Focusing on the work of local artists, the show strives to show the influence that Mexican culture “has had on the people of Los Angeles,” de Bruin said. The program includes sculptor Gilbert (Magu) Lujan, painter Linda O’Hagan and Patricia Ancona Ha, who has created a 35-foot batik installation.

“Magu has been very instrumental in bringing the Latin artist to the forefront,” added de Bruin. “He’s been very involved in politics in order to help people identify their roots.”

The show continues through Oct. 11 at the gallery, 7570 McGroarty Terrace, in Tujunga. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. For information, call (818) 352-5285.

At the CSUN Art Galleries, hundreds of pieces from Nelson Rockefeller’s collection of folk art from Mexico share the school’s gallery space with an exhibition of “Day of the Dead” art and a sculptural work of a lowrider by Frank Romero. The galleries are open noon to 4 p.m. Mondays and Saturdays, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays.

There are other Valley shows this fall.

“The West of John Clymer” presents more than 50 of the artist’s paintings at the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum, offering scenes mostly from the history of the American Southwest. Clymer, who died in 1989, was best known for these and for his depictions of wildlife as an illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post, Field and Stream, True, and Western Home Monthly.

“He did go through painstaking efforts to be as historically accurate as possible, relying on journals and reports and diaries,” said museum spokeswoman Geri R. Fitchett. He actually went to the locations, camped there and followed their trail.”

The exhibit, which was last shown at the Wildlife of the West Museum in Jackson, Wyo., opens Saturday and continues through Nov. 11. Hours at the museum, 4700 Western Heritage Way (next to the L.A. Zoo), are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is $5.50 for adults, $4 for seniors and students, and $2.50 for children ages 2 to 12. Parking is free. For information, call (213) 667-2000.

Curator Scott Canty will be dividing the Artspace Gallery in Woodland Hills into four sections beginning Oct. 8 for an installation show titled “Environmental Delights.” Artists Karen Fuson, Sheila Klein, Dan and Eve King-Lehman, and Richard Oginz will be showcased.

“The whole exhibit is around the idea of fun and fanciful art,” Canty said.

One of the gallery sections, he added, will be a darkened semi-enclosed room designed to show the glass and light sculptures of the King-Lehman husband-and-wife team. These works, either mounted on pedestals or onto the gallery walls, mix fluorescent tubes, glass beads, mirrors and light.

Elsewhere, Fuson’s “The Trophy Series” uses feathers, wigs, fur and found objects, reflecting the artist’s continuing theme of femininity. “Her materials reflect what is a woman,” Canty said. “Her work is very fun. You’d want to touch it because it’s so stimulating to your eye with all its textures and colors.”

The large kinetic works of Oginz, Canty added, encourage people to touch them. Among them are a pair of pushcarts that rumble with cardboard flames or waves of cardboard water when moved. And nearby will be Klein’s giant eyelash made of steel tubing and a giant wig made out of chain. “Her work is really about our environment and what objects we come across every day,” Canty said.

“Environmental Delights” continues at Artspace, 21800 Oxnard St., through Nov. 21. The gallery is open noon to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. For information, call (818) 716-2786.

“On Architecture” at the Photo Art Gallery in Burbank presents the colorful architectural photography of Neil Hart and Howard Rosenfeld. Scattered across the gallery’s walls through Oct. 6 are Rosenfeld’s large Cibachrome prints, which study the form and texture of buildings, and Hart’s 8-by-10-inch prints that examine the space next to large structures.

“The colors are very rich, and we wanted to get something a bit more traditional in the gallery this time,” said gallery owner Robert D. George. “Not necessarily something dull or boring, but something people can look at and enjoy the relationships examined. I certainly wouldn’t mind looking at them in the morning on my bedroom wall.”

Judith Jaye Tansman’s “Dark Secrets,” a series of installation works printed on massive photographic paper, begins at the gallery Oct. 12 and continues through November. The Photo Art Gallery, 150 S. San Fernando Blvd., is open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and until 3 p.m. Saturdays. For information, call (818) 846-0673.