Featured Artist

The CopperDog mission is to develop charitable, educational, and benevolent activities dedicated to the enrichment, development, and vitality of communities, natural resources, and trail systems in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula through world-class events, creating informational and educational opportunities, encouraging national recognition, specifically with respect to advancing national and international sled dog sports including sled dog racing and an understanding of the historic role of sled dogs in a natural environment.

Our ‘Featured Artist Program’ (FAP) goes right along with our mission! The 2023 FAP was open to all Houghton and Keweenaw County High School Students including homeschoolers. With this in mind, the CopperDog Board of Directors is pleased to announce winner of the 2023 FAP;

Trista Berryman from The Official Calumet High School!!! And in her own words;

“Hello, My name is Trista Berryman, a 10th grader at Calumet High School. My piece is titled, “Racing On Orange Gold”, which is a reference to the copper found in the Copper Country. Throughout the piece, I tried to incorporate the colors mint and orange, to represent copper during oxidation, and in its original state. The medium I used was digital.”

The Featured Art will be on the 2023 official race poster, which will be visible throughout the Keweenaw and surrounding areas, as advertising for this year’s race. Each official in the race will also be wearing Trista’s artwork on a badge. In addition, CopperDog may sell the poster to the public as part of our 2023 merchandising efforts, which provides support for this premier community event. The artwork could also be featured on CopperDog merchandise.

The Featured Artist will also be present at the start ceremony in downtown Calumet on Friday night. All monies raised from the Featured Artist sales are considered part of the overall fundraising efforts, which support the annual CopperDog events.

Did we tell you how hard it was to pick a winner from all of our submissions??? It was extremely hard…

We are incredibly proud of our area youth and are also happy to display in this post the two runners up to the FAP – which are no less incredible! Thank you Vanessa and Rain!!

We already can’t wait for 2024!!!