Season of Promise : Despite limited budgets, area galleries have full agendas and a variety of wintertime offerings--from ‘Iconography’ to landscapes.

The winter season promises to bring a heartening variety of art exhibits to the San Fernando Valley. The area’s diverse art venues will present work by contemporary artists from Southern California and beyond. This feat is all the more impressive in light of the ongoing struggle of some college and community galleries to stay alive on limited budgets.

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The Cal State Northridge Art Galleries continue to carry on in a trailer near the intersection of Nordhoff Street and Etiwanda Avenue, their home since last year’s earthquake. The “World of Puppets,” a show of 102 puppets from around the world that opened in December and closed for the Christmas holidays, has reopened and runs through Jan. 13.

Beginning Jan. 30, the show “Tom O’Day: Waste to Energy to Waste” presents CSUN alumnus O’Day’s site-specific installation. It considers art disposal made necessary by natural and manufactured events. The installation features the remains of artwork by artists living in the Northwest.

In March, the art galleries will present “The Impact of La Huelga” (the strike), which explores the United Farm Workers under the leadership of Cesar Chavez. Photographs by George Ballis and posters and other holdings of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles will constitute a major portion of the exhibit.

CSUN Art Annex 116, near Nordhoff Street and Etiwanda Avenue, Northridge. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. (818) 885-2226 or (818) 885-2156.

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The University of Judaism’s Platt Gallery begins this year’s schedule Sunday with “Gerda Mathan: New Light on Old Stones and Other Work.” Mathan, a photographer living in Berkeley, will show her photographs of the remnants of Prague’s Jewish community, as well as images from Spain, Israel and Egypt. She will attend Sunday’s opening reception, from 3 to 5 p.m.

Next on the Platt Gallery’s agenda is a show of work by two Hungarian artists: drawings by Imre Amos, who perished in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944, and ceramics by Levente Thury, (born 1941) of Budapest. These artists are united by their regard for a 19th-Century rabbi’s cabalistic teachings.

University of Judaism’s Platt Gallery, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Bel-Air. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday. (310) 476-9777, Ext. 276.

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Century Gallery, administered on behalf of Los Angeles County by Los Angeles Mission College, is located in Veterans Memorial Park in Sylmar. Its current painting show, “From the Garden,” offering four artists’ very different visions of flowers, runs through Jan. 20.

On Feb. 5, the gallery opens “Earth Time,” a show that delves into the processes of nature with artists Robert Bassler, Anthony and Donna Campbell, Karen Jollie, Jonathan Martin and Mark Venaglia. The next show, beginning March 19, brings together the abstract work of Renee Amitai, Katherine Coons, Selma Moskowitz, Kaoru Mansour and Gail Tomura around the theme of intuition and randomness in art and life.

Century Gallery, Veterans Memorial Park, 13000 Sayre St., Sylmar. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. (818) 362-3220.

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Pierce College Art Gallery opens “Iconography as Metaphor” on Jan. 25. Four Los Angeles artists--George Combs, Christina Fernandez, Rosa M. and Beth Sternlieb--will exhibit pieces that incorporate images from legend, myth, folklore, history and the Bible. A five-year retrospective of Los Angeles artist Jacqueline Dreager’s multimedia work will come to the gallery in March.

Pierce College Art Gallery, 6201 Winnetka Ave., Woodland Hills. Open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Thursday. (818) 719-6498.

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Woodbury University in Burbank opened its gallery space last year and presented some of the Valley’s more unusual art shows. Its first offering this year will highlight projects by interior design students. The show will open to the public at the end of February.

Woodbury University, 7500 Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank. (818) 767-0888. Call for show dates and times.

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A few miles from Woodbury, one can visit not one but two more art galleries in Burbank: The Creative Arts Center Municipal Gallery in George Izay Park and Mythos gallery on Olive Avenue, just a few steps away from the park and the Creative Arts Center.

Mythos’ current show, “OtherWise,” continues through Jan. 31 with the work of gallery director Glen Leonard Doll, Ross Amador and Bogdan Dumitrica.

“In our own individual way,” Doll said, “we have committed ourselves to the knowledge rising from that dark ocean, identified in this 20th Century as the unconscious. It is the same mysterious force which was once known simply as the soul. Amongst the three of us, there is a shared belief in the authenticity and sustaining power of images conjured by a power only tangentially related to the intellect.”

On Sunday, the Creative Arts Center opens “light and shadow: Sculpture by Dean Smith and Tari A. Brand.” A reception with the artists will be from 2 to 4 p.m.

Inspired by the microscopic world of aquatic life, Smith relates that world’s forms to human scale by making large, welded steel abstractions. Brand’s pieces are rooted in literal and conceptual interpretations of vessels and containers.

Beginning Feb. 5, the center will present the clay sculpture of Monica Mann. The Youth Art Expo, a show of works by students in Burbank elementary and secondary schools, opens in March, followed by the Fine Arts Federation membership show in April.

Mythos, 1009 W. Olive Ave., Burbank. Open noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. (818) 843-3686.

Creative Arts Center Municipal Gallery, 1100 W. Clark Ave., Burbank. Open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday. (818) 953-8763.

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Nearby in Glendale, the Brand Library Art Galleries’ “Brand XXIV,” its 24th yearly national juried competition, concludes Jan. 31. Four days later, “Local Four” will open with works by members of art associations in Glendale, Burbank, Eagle Rock and the Verdugo foothills. In March, the Brand will exhibit the large-scale paintings of Danny David and Jerry Romotsky.

Brand Library Art Galleries, 1601 W. Mountain St., Glendale. Open 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. (818) 548-2050.

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The Orlando Gallery in Sherman Oaks starts 1995 with an opening Jan. 13 of landscape paintings by Zolita Sverdlove, and ink, watercolor and acrylic works involving the human figure by Len Poteshman. An opening reception begins at 8 p.m.

The Orlando will show paintings by Suzanne Bothwell in February, paintings of Ken Gilliland and Mahara Sinclare in March and “Eroticism ‘95,” a show of work by 18 artists, in April.

Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. (818) 789-6012.

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Artspace gallery in Woodland Hills, until the middle of last year a satellite gallery of the Los Angeles City Cultural Affairs Department, has continued to operate since then under auspices of the Valley’s nonprofit Cultural Foundation. The foundation has made the gallery available to various art organizations, including Everywoman’s Village and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society.

Through Jan. 27, the West Valley Jewish Community Center is showing “The 5th Annual Art of Our Generations.” The exhibit includes art by members and staff of the center as well as students of the center’s art classes. The work of teachers and professional artists Bert Miripolski and Ed Krimston, and sculptor Harriet Hochberg, is also on display.

The Collage Society, a Valley group, will take over Artspace in February, followed by the San Fernando Valley Arts Council in March and Everywoman’s Village’s “Co-op 7” group in April.

Artspace, 21800 Oxnard St., Woodland Hills. Open noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. (818) 716-2786.

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New Canyon Gallery, a co-op gallery in Topanga, grew from 30 to more than 60 members during 1994. About 30 members live outside of Topanga Canyon, from Venice and Mar Vista to various communities in the Valley. There is “a lot of young energy” here, said Howard Craig, the outgoing president.

The gallery plans a Valentine’s Day show in February and after that a children’s show. Also in 1995, it will change its name to Topanga Canyon Gallery.

New Canyon Gallery, 129 S. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Call (310) 455-3923 for show dates and times.

* Nancy Kapitanoff writes regularly about art for The Times.