The day I made the decision to leave my job of 7 years to pursue my passions, on my way home I decided to take a little detour. I needed time to reflect, to think about my life and whether or not leaving my job was the right decision (I also really wanted an ice coffee from The Warehouse). Filled with insecurity, looking down on the ground, I remember thinking to myself “look up, it’s going to be OK” and the first thing I saw was “Dream Big” a tag by Mr AbiLLity. It was exactly what I needed to see at that moment… After that, I started paying more attention to his work around town. Mr AbiLLity spreads so much love and positivity and I believe he truly makes a difference in peoples lives and I couldn’t wait to meet him. We met by the “Dream Big” tag to chat and I listened to his amazing stories. After that, we rode our bikes all over Jersey City to check out his other work… It was a day I will never forget, Mr AbiLLity is truly inspiring.

Start from the beginning… Well I’m actually new to painting; Spray-painting and painting in general. I started maybe 2/3 years ago… But I’ve always drawn… One day I saw a movie called “Exit Through the Gift Shop”. It’s a movie that is about Banksy in a way… it’s about someone else who was this eccentric camera man who was filming his cousin, a street artist and other street artists… and this guy started doing it himself… he wasn’t even an artist… throughout the movie they were showing that he started making thousands of dollars on his artwork and I was like I can do that… and I’ve always wanted to be a professional artist. Then I had to think about what I was going to do, what I was going to say through my art.  Generally I am an optimistic guy… if you are having a shitty day I am that guy that will tell you “Don’t worry about it man, everything is going to be better” So I was like I guess it should be something like that.

One of my first pieces was the the heart flower… I did a couple and it was terrible….they were small so no one ever really noticed them until my friend sent me pictures of some and posted it on Facebook…people started seeing it and it got me excited! I got alot of love. I love, love…. it’s so nice!

You are the most positive person ever. Can you tell me about what you write on the wall and what inspires it? I have my days too…But when I talk on walls a lot of times I am talking to myself because I need that… and I know other people need to hear things too. I am a dreamer…

This one is one of my favorites…Follow your dreams. If I could sum it up it would be follow your dreams, believe in yourself and great things will happen.

I love that. I really do. What is the process of choosing the wall you write on? I’m retired now…. due to legal issues…  But it depends on the space and the idea…

Do you want to talk about your legal issues? I was a fool… Like I said I love the love… I like to interact with people, so I make myself  easily accessible, which is a problem when you are committing crimes. A friend of mine that works for city hall called me one day…and I’ve done things for city hall through her and she said “hey listen, you might want to take it easy for a little while. Detectives came in, asking questions and they have a warrant for you…”. I will forever remember this small piece of conversation “Damn I am just trying to do good, how come this never happened to Batman?”  haha and

she said “Batman never tweeted…”

I was an idiot because I liked the recognition, the recognition felt cozy like a blanket.

But you deserve it! you are a blanket for all of us! Thank you… to all except for the law… Anyway, my friend told me that if I turned myself in that everything would probably be lessened and the most they would give you is community service so since I work for city hall it would probably be painting murals for city hall…Before I could even confess I got arrested on my way to work… now it turns out, since I didn’t turn myself in and I got arrested, city hall doesn’t want anything to do with a criminal. It hurts my feelings.

My heart just broke…. It hurts my feelings because that’s the way the world works…. but the fact that shit like that happens is terrible.

After I got arrested, I heard people thought I was snitching on graffiti artists. That shit hurt my feelings man…I only owned up to my own shit. I would never say anything about other people….

So what’s going to happen now? I went to court today….I am assuming it will be a bunch of fees, maybe community service. The worst thing, that I think is going to happen…because I have terrible luck, is they will make me clean graffiti and it will be my own.

That would suck! I would cry. Me too.

What do you do to pay the bills? I work at UPS…. it’s a shitty job and I just want to be an artist. When I was doing the walls, it was good for me, because people would hit me up, would want to buy canvas’s, they want me to paint their houses… So now that I don’t do that I feel like there is a detour. Its not done, just a detour…

How do you come up with all the sayings you put on the walls? I very rarely do it spontaneously…the idea is usually planned. Whenever I have an idea I draw it down…

Do you think you will be able to do street art again? I am pretty sure that Mr AbiLLity, has to do legal stuff… for sure I can paint, but I’ll need permission. Without permission I don’t  even exist, I am just a memory. I have a funny story actually…I was riding my bike to work and I was on Ocean ave, I got pulled over by 3 undercover cops…I had markers in my bag that I shouldn’t really have legally… so they asked me if I had anything in my bag that was illegal and I said I had markers. They were like “Are you a graffiti artist” and I said “I used to be, but I gave it up…” so he looked through my sketchbook and he is like “Oh, you’re that guy that writes the poetry on the walls, right?” and I was like “Yeah, follow your dreams, stuff like that…” and then he said “Not for nothing but I really like your stuff”.

Great story!! So I find your work to be very child friendly… It is, I am a kid at heart. I show my daughter all the stuff…She loves it. I passed on all my optimism off to her… I will give her stickers to draw on.

How long have you been in Jersey city for?  I have been in Jersey City my whole life… I was born in Hoboken, I was there when I was younger. This year I moved to Bayonne.

Do you have a favorite Jersey City hangout spot? I like downtown, I like Barcade specifically….

Can I see your sketchbook? Sure. This is a utility belt that I sketched out… If I was a super hero, this would be what it would be.

This is John Lemon…

I got a bunch of sketches here… What I did was an evil skull within the dollar bill and he is crushing dreams…because the lack of money crushes dreams so frequently. Starving artist all day!

I am on my way there!! haha, so this shirt itself I also designed.

This is one of my favorite ones, I managed to put this on the wall of a community garden… We are all the same, and we are all connected… Humanity itself lets its insecurity shine… the truth is,we are all the same people…

I like video games, I am a big nerd…. see they are smoking weed. I am also a pot head!  Yeah. I want to do now I want to do a comic of my adventures and my shenanigans because I feel like its funny, I do some stupid shit all the time and

I feel like the key to positivity is to be able to laugh at yourself. If you can’t laugh at life you are going to be one sorry son of a bitch. If you can’t turn shit into fertilizer you are going to be in a smelly situation!

What’s the story behind this camera? I have no idea. I don’t know who did it, but I saw people post in it on instagram and they would tag me and I was like “oh that’s not me”. I like it, it’s great…But it’s not me. So after it happened a couple of times I was like man I want to know who this guy is and I want to work with him but I have no way of contacting him.  Since I didn’t know how to get in touch with him, I figured the wall would be the best way.  I came back and I painted the shovel and I said I dig it and I signed it because I indeed do dig this…

Yeah I thought that was you. And a block up somebody painted “the world is yours” which wasn’t me…but it has positive messaging.

Copycats? No I am not going to call them copycats. I am going to call them people I have inspired which I love. We are on the same team! But I have people who are there is this one guy who painted in. He painted dream big, he painted the Gandhi quote that I painted…

How do you feel about that?  I feel like we should team up. That’s what I feel. I feel awesome!  When it comes to graffiti it’s very territorial…I didn’t invent love,  so why would I take credit for it?

This is obviously you right? This was the first heart guy that I did.

Then I did this one… Oh someone colored it! The whole point was for it to be colored! That means two people liked this. This is the real life instagram…you don’t know by clicks… you know by comments that are on the actual picture. I painted this on canvas and I liked it enough…so thought it should go on the wall. I left the world with no color on purpose….people thought I didn’t finish it…the point of it was for someone else to paint the world.

Why are you called Mr AbiLLity?  Well I am called Mr. AbiLLity because Abillity was taken…before I got into spray painting I rhymed… I still rhyme and I wanted to incorporate the word “ill”to a name, because to me something “ill” is good.

Do you freestyle? Yes!

Can you do a freestyle for us? 

I love this one!  I used to live in that building…and this wall had a bunch of shitty tags. I lived there a couple of years ago before I even painted walls.  I used to live there with my daughters mom when we were a happy family, that was my happy home.  Of course things don’t always work out the way you would like them to and her and I broke up…but that house was still my home you know… so I was looking for  walls and they cleaned up that wall and it was just a big green wall and I was like “wow I would love  to put something on there because it means something to me”. I did the small one first that says “We all fall sometimes” and it has a bunch of leafs because that’s the story about what happened to my family…I came back after a while expecting it to be gone but it was still there..

So I decided to go bigger…and added to it…I was surprised because the landlord is a grumpy fuck and I guess he liked it…I decided to add the garden there in the middle. Then something happened, it got tagged! and out of all things it said “Coke” which really pissed me off! So I thought to myself: “Well thats what you get for being greedy”…. I came back a few weeks later and the “Coke” got buffed but my garden stayed and the leaves stayed…

What’s the story about this one?  I am a nerd at heart…I love scientists, I love the universe and I love the Beatles… I love any feel good type shit.   I decided to do the Beatles crossing Abbey Road but as scientists. On Monmouth there is an area with alleys, and there was a wall I was going to put this mural on… I went there one Saturday and I buffed the wall with all the tags…and then I came back the next day. It turns out the alley wall was a church and they said I couldn’t paint on it! It didn’t look like a church and there was a tag that said poop fuck you can’t let me put some art over poop fuck? If they would of realized that I wanted to put Charles Darwin on a church they would shit themselves with anger!! They are not going to be open to this specific art etc…I felt defeated… My friend made a couple of phone calls and he knows that guy who owns this building and he told us to paint it. This space is way better, it’s bigger and better seen by the public as opposed to an alley.

Can you tell me about the quote? It’s a song from the Beatles called “Across the Universe”, its my favorite line because I love visual sense and if you can paint a picture…”images of broken light which dance before me like a millions eyes… They call me on and on across the universe”  to think of the stars and eyes dancing before you know… is such a pretty fucking way to say it…it’s poetic in a sense and I like it…When the stars fucking explode the elements are here on earth we couldn’t even be here if there wasn’t for the stars….The fact that this mural was able to happen is a miracle.

You collaborated with Damaged Wear recently right? Well in an effort to show some local love.. Damaged wear and I have teamed up! It’s a great brand and Dennis is a great guy… he has shown nothing but love for me and my art so I returned the favor. The shirts are awesome and hopefully more to come soon.

Damaged Wear

Mr AbiLLity Instagram