Mark Mitchell, Linked Twin Jerseys
Linked Twin Jerseys, 2016, hand-sewn silk chiffon, is part of the powerful group show What You See Is What You Sweat at the Good Arts Building. The work is an homage to a Seattle mother coping with the imprisonment of a child. Jen Graves

1. Finalists for the Betty Bowen Award ($15,000, show at Seattle Art Museum) are out: Dawn Cerny, Mark Mitchell, Sadie Wechsler (for the second year in a row), Wendy Red Star, and Evan Baden. No painters this year. Three of the artists work in photomedia, Cerny is a multimedia artist, and Mitchell works in textiles (see above).

2. The Neddy Awards (two awards of $25,000), administered by Cornish, is having an expanded 20th-anniversary exhibition at Paul Allen's Pivot Art + Culture space. Nominees this year are Nathan DiPietro, Robert Hardgrave, Paul Komada, and Kimberly Trowbridge in painting; and in open medium, Dawn Cerny, Mandy Greer, C. Davida Ingram, and Clyde Petersen.

The expanded exhibition will feature all the nominees plus 10 past winners from the two decades of the award, given in honor of the late Ned Behnke.

The guest curator this year is exciting. It's Hamza Walker, the longtime educator/curator at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago who's also an adjunct professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and who co-curated the current Hammer Museum biennial Made in L.A. 2016, getting great reviews. He's an all-around thoughtful person whose studio visits should make a difference to Seattle artists if they can get some feedback from him.

3. The 14th annual Stranger Genius Awards (five awards of $5,000 each) are coming up on September 24th at the Moore Theatre, y'all. Don't forget the party is FREE.

Up this year in Art are Barbara Earl Thomas, Mario Lemafa, and Rob Rhee, and there are 20 other nominees upon whom you should also heap some love and affection.