7 at Blitzer features seven award-winning Santa Cruz artists: stone sculptors Jeff Arnett and Michael Bashista; metal sculptor Marilyn Kuksht; painters Charles Prentiss and Taz Childress; printmaker Eva Bernstein, and photographer/painter Virginia Draper. Similar in their enjoyment of the processes of making art and in their openness to mysterious accidents, these seven artists present an exciting diversity of compositions, textures, styles, and intentions.  Kuksht, whose “Virgin Moon” is at the intersection of Front and Pacific in downtown Santa Cruz, draws in space with steel.  Bashista also works intuitively, with no outcome in mind, inspired by the unique relationship that develops between him and each stone.   Arnett, who is working on an outdoor marble sculpture for the Arboretum at U. C.  Santa Cruz, savors the hours he spends hammering, rasping, sanding, and polishing stone.  In his abstract images, Arnett’s work calls our attention to the way sculptors “shape light and dark, reveal stone’s memory of minerals, and smooth the calluses of time.  Bernstein embraces printmaking because it “makes me let go of complete control over my art-making. Nothing is predetermined.”  Typically, her monotypes are bold, evocative, and nonobjective with strong color and fine lines, though her longtime practice of figure drawing and her rural surroundings sometime lead to unintentional references.  Also committed to letting the process guide him, Childress paints with “an empty mind.” This commitment and his frequent use of saturated acrylics contribute to an abstract expressionist style. Much of his work eludes categorization with unusual elements and images that belie his offbeat humor and cultural insights.  Prentiss, a museum exhibit designer and architectural and color consultant as well as a widely admired painter, has won two Best in Show awards at MAH Plein Air exhibits.  Best known for his colorful, regional oil paintings and eclectic style, Prentiss is a frequent participant in invitational and solo gallery shows.  Often considered a painterly photographer, Draper will be showing subtle, enigmatic images of sand patterns and recent work that combines paint and digital prints. Inspired by Gerhard Richter’s overpainted photographs, she explores how painted gestures interact with and challenge the documentary quality of photography.