Haley Goodreau, Bryan Lowney, Hannah Rundman Lowney and B Lauer discuss their favorite entries in the annual SHAFT exhibit during Thursday night’s annual Party with the Arts at the Copper Country Community Arts Center in Hancock. (Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette)

HANCOCK — Seeing a piece of art is one thing. When it comes to a community arts center, getting to meet the artists behind it is another. 

“If you don’t know somebody, see their painting up on the wall, it’s like, ‘OK, that is art. It’s nice,'” said Lana Skubick, a board member with the Copper Country Community Arts Center. “But a lot of these people have community connections with each other, and that adds that extra layer of just importance, and it being meaningful.”

Those connections, and the art behind it, were on display Thursday night at CCCAC’s Party with the Arts, which the board puts on each year. 

The annual night serves as a membership drive for the center, and raises funds for the center through a silent auction. People who joined Thursday night also got to enter a drawing for door prizes. 

It also coincided with the opening reception for the annual SHAFT exhibit, which contains mining-themed works from community artists inspired by the area’s mining history. 

Hancock resident Luke Pascot learned about the event from his roommate. He enjoyed having a community event to check out in Hancock. As a local musician, it gave him the chance to see others he knows playing live. And walking through the exhibits, he got to see the work of local artists in a different field. 

“It’s really neat,” he said. “It’s just cool to see a community come together and show off what they’ve got.”

He’d been most struck by an antique wooden table with a mosaic tile top. 

In the center’s easternmost room, people examined this year’s entries in the SHAFT exhibit. Twenty-three local artists contributed works to the exhibit, which considers both the visible landmarks from the mining era, as well as the effects it left on the people and the landscape of the Copper Country. 

People can vote for their favorite piece throughout the month, with the winner to be announced in early December, said Executive Director Cynthia Cote. 

Local artist Charlie Eshbach threw his support behind another local artist: Barbara Summersett, whose mixed-media piece “Tumbling Time” showed chunks of rock with copper tumbling downhill from a mine. 

Near the end of Thursday’s reception, a group of friends was looking at the pieces and debating their top choices.

They coalesced around a consensus pick: Jim Dee’s “Our Company Policy,” a black-and-white ink drawing showing the view above and below ground. The ore cars and the narrow strip of the shaft labeled “mine” — and everything else in the ground, dismissed as “not mine.”

“Sure, it made a flourishing economy for the area, but it also kind of destroyed it,” Bryan Lowney said. “It kind of gets to one of the main gripes I have with some people, that they have this inherent thought … ‘This is my property. I can do whatever I want with this because it’s mine,’ when nobody really owns the land.”

The exhibit had been a “happy surprise” for B Lauer, the executive director of the Keweenaw Land Trust, who’d shown up to support the CCCAC.

“I feel like the community center is such a staple in the community, in terms of the center that it creates for people to come and learn about art and create their own art,” she said. 

They said it also creates a tighter connection to others in the community, whether they’re the ones making the art or just enjoying it.

“Anytime I can come to one of the gallery openings, you always get to see great art, and the people who show up is just a really good community,” said Hannah Rundman Lowney. “I only see a lot of people that I’m already friends with, or people that I want to be friends with. It’s just a good feeling.”