Walking by Temple Street the other day a poster on a kiosk caught my eye. A robot party at Mayo Street Arts—$5 for humans, free for robots. OK, cute idea, sounds like fun. But what I remembered was the poster: an obsessively detailed dancing robot with anatomical cutaways revealing the human within, and the three Portland based musical acts represented by number coded pullouts. ID M Theft able, an audio performance artist, is the eyeball; Power Lines, an instrumental/electronic duo, is the heart; and Computer at Sea, a live electronics act, is an ear implant connected to a sea shell. When an email announcement showed up in my in box the following day, I replied asking who did the (unsigned) poster. Surprisingly, the sender of the email, a Mayo Street intern from USM, is also their poster designer. Lucky Mayo Street! Not only has the East Bayside neighborhood arts organization received funding for new multicultural youth programming this year (the Performing Arts and Culture Series and the Children's Puppet Workshop), but a number of their recent events have featured attention grabbing posters by Johnathan Cook, a polymath printmaking and political science student at USM. Along with the robot poster, he did an arts and crafts period inspired piece for a Dead Man's Clothes show and the macabre raveup for their Halloween party (sampled in our Halloween post.) My favorite image of his is the deluged Victorian mansion on pier pilings that he did for 350.org's global work party event this fall. I asked Johnathan to tell me about how he came to Portland (and whether he thinks it's the coolest thing since sliced bread) and this is what he said: "I'm not originally from Maine, I was born in Orlando, FL. I lived in the UK for a little while when I was very young but spent most of my childhood in West Palm Beach, FL. I moved to Maine when I was 14 as I had family here, whereupon I settled in Old Orchard Beach to attend high school. After high school I floated around a bit, ending up in Boston then London before returning to Maine and settling in Portland to study. The first school I attended was SMCC though I took MECA classes periodically whenever I could afford it. I enrolled at USM in 2007 upon graduation from SMCC. In 2008/2009 I studied at L’Ecole supérieure des beaux-arts du Mans in France through an exchange with USM. From fall 2009 to now I've been back in Portland finishing up my degree. As it happens I do think Portland is the coolest thing since sliced bread, and I've been a lot of places so that means something. It's the only place that has ever truly felt like home and I can't think of much any major city has that Portland doesn't. There's beautiful architecture, amazing food and a thriving arts community, plus I can see the ocean from my bedroom. I plan to stay in Portland for the year after my graduation while I apply to graduate schools in Europe. I haven't planned out my life much past that point but I'm positive I'll end up back in Portland."Johnathan expresses many of things that I hear again and again from people in the creative community here: an interest and ability to do multiple things passionately, an indescribable sense of feeling at home here, and a larger world view in which Portland has earned it's place. That Portland continues to attract such talented and accomplished young people says a lot—that they choose to stay here or return after sojourns in larger cities says even more.

Tags: arts, design, education, live in portland, marketing, music, neighborhoods, non-profit, work in portland