The Neddy Awards—$25,000 each to two winners and $1,500 each to six finalists—are given every year to “individuals who create outstanding work with an applied consciousness of responsibility to society.” This joint exhibition of all their works gives you a chance to consider what the criteria mean and whether you’d have applied them the same way, and it’s also a good survey of strong Seattle artists. This year’s winners are Susanna Bluhm and Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, and the finalists are Claude Zervas, Mark Calderon, Clyde Petersen, Joey Veltkamp, Robert Hardgrave, and Kimberly Trowbridge—painters, sculptors, and collagists whose works touch on landscape, gender, race, music, Western art history, patterning, and grief. It’s a small but big show. (Cornish College of the Arts Main Gallery, 1000 Lenora St, cornish.edu/neddy_at_cornish, noon–5 pm, free, through Oct 18)