Muralist, designer and painter Willis “NOMO” plays by his own rules

What inspires your work?

It’s just like little sparks of inspiration I guess, like writers have. When you’re doing something that’s not even related to anything. I get it from just stuff in the world that you see, you have an opinion on but you can’t quite express it at the time but you got it inside you, and then all of a sudden… “Oh Yea!” “Sinking Feeling” was like the first, theme oriented show that I did and it was basically a bunch of people in the water. But yo, some of them… could’ve been drowning, or they could’ve been just hanging on or they could’ve been doing alright. It was just kind of a feeling that I had at the time, just with my peronsal situation and that’s kind of how I expressed it. I try to come up with clever ways of visually stating what I’m feeling, without it just being like blatant. I just it comes from life and just how I see it.

What was the force behind your first mural, “Bridging the Gap”?

The gist of it was, there was the West African community and the African American community in West Philly. And there was some kids going to school, African kids going to school and getting picked on and there was just friction between the two, back and forth and they (Mural Arts Program) figured that the mural would be a way to kind of visually show the simalirities between the two… bridge the gap.

In your opinion, do murals create social change?

I don’t create a mural and think somebody’s gonna walk past it and think like, “I gotta get my life together!” (chuckles) I know with the mural I did (Bridging the Gap), it was a conversation starter, ya know, so it got people talking that maybe wouldn’t have talked before. And it’s not just a mural. The Mural Arts Program, they’re pretty in depth. So it’ll be a mural but then they’ll have like a panel discussion about it, they’ll have like a community paint day to bring African kids and African American kids out, so I think all of those things just kind of help push the process along.

What are your future plans?

I have so many ideas but the one that I guess is the most close to being materialzed is the “NOMO Design Factory” idea. I would like it to be a creative outlet and the things I would produce would be like all merchandise. Like shirts… NOMO Cotton would be the shirts, NOMO Deco would be like home decor, NOMO Time is under home deco. [Basically] anything I could kind of mass produce, come up with a quick way of making it and get some people that can help. I think more so than skill, technical skill, I’ve always had more of creative skills, just to come up with concepts.

What exactly is NOMO?

NOMO started off as “No More” and I thought it sounded clever because people don’t really know what it means. It’s kind of like, you know, I was at a point when I was in school, and on my own and really just trying to break away from traditions and peoples’ perceptions of what I should be like and what I should be doing. [That is] kind of where NOMO came from, it’s kinda like no more restrictions, no more holding you back from what you wanna do. So that’s kinda where it came from.

See more art by NOMO: Myspace