The Magnificent Sevens

The auspicious 7/7/07 went off without a hitch -- unless you count the thousands of couples who got hitched hoping that the lucky sevens might somehow decrease their odds of divorce. Las Vegas was packed with superstitious wackos hovering over slot machines. And Tupac is still dead despite his crazed fans' prediction of a miraculous resurrection.

Though she swears she's not superstitious, local gallery owner Lisa Sette cashed in on the day’s notoriety with the "7+7+7=21" summer group exhibit. "I don't usually buy into numerology," says Sette. "My last name means 'seven' in Italian, the exhibit started on 7/7/07, and the gallery opened 21 years ago. It's serendipitous, but true."

The show at Sette's gallery features sculpture, paintings, photography, and mixed-media works by 21 artists from around the globe, including Enrique Chagoya, RES, Rick Hards, and Lalla Essaydi. Highlights include a video piece by Gregory Sale -- in which he hijacks Yoko Ono's San Francisco MoMA exhibit -- and Vietnamese artist Binh Danh's leaf prints. Dahn attaches disturbing photo negatives from Khmer work camps to large plant leaves kept alive in jars of water. When the natural chlorophyll process has developed the print onto the leaf, the stem is cut and the leaf is preserved. "It's a push-and-pull process," says Sette. "There's this really lovely pull from the beauty of the leaves, but the subject matter is pretty tough."