Michal Majewski might just be the poster child for the New Oshawa.

Ironically enough, as the Motor City lumbers from the industrial to the digital age, Majewski is moving in the opposite direction, into the organic age.

A second-year graphic design student at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology AKA You Owe It, this Polish artist scours the hock shops and thrift stores of a decayed downtown for the tools of his tirades. The old magazines, LP covers, discarded books, the detritus of the Digeratti, become the elements of his collage-style gig posters.

And his reputation is growing. He has been a featured artist on Gigposters.com and is part of a touring museum exhibition Graphic Noise in the States.

If the first rule of gig advertisement is legibility then that's the first rule Majewski breaks. His posters are near impossible to read. The information, the words, the letters, the numbers, the commas and periods are all so stretched, warped, mashed and mangled, pummelled and pounded down to barely recognizable essentials and then rebuilt into a language that is so stylised, so singularly his that the poster is not read but seen. The posters are a language of angst and that angst is born from a place that itself has been torn.

It is the distinctive nature of his posters that is providing a voice for the burgeoning music scene based in The Shwa and surrounding areas. An area that has already given up K-Os, the Mark Inside and Ladies and Gentlemen. Majewski has created posters for the early shows of acts such as Anagram and Protest The Hero.

It is this marriage between music and art that has helped in the success of Arts and Crafts (Feist, Stars) and Three Gut Records (Constantines). While the PC has provided the tools to produce in a manner heretofore unknown no Apple thinks, nevermind thinks different. As music becomes digitized the packaging and promotion departments have taken up the DIY attitude. The handcrafted CD case, the hand-painted T-shirt and the hand-drawn gig poster ensure an individuality that can't be co-opted by Bif Daddy Corporation.

Majewski, who plays bass in grindcore outfit FATO, gives credit for his style to his Polish roots, such designers as Franciszek Starowieyski, whose work can be viewed at Polishposter.com. He discovered Oshawa's dearth of musical opportunities as a teenaged immigrant. So he took it upon himself to book the shows he wanted to attend. He used the Polish Hall. He wouldn't have been the first. Shows need promotion. So Majewski took that on also. Now he creates posters for bands from all over Ontario and Eastern Europe. It may be in a few years his posters could become as collectable as 90s indie icon Frank Kozik's. He could well become the next Seripop but something says he would be content to be the next Michal Majewski.

William McGuirk is a freelance writer and longtime Oshawa resident. He can be contacted at wmacg@yahoo.com.