Located in downtown Philadelphia’s iconic South Street, Philly’s Magic Gardens is an artistic spectacle. It’s a dazzling outdoor-and-indoor labyrinth crammed from top to bottom and all around with the mosaics of local artist Isaiah Zagar.
If you walk around South Street, you will no doubt see other mosaics by Zagar, who has made it his life’s occupation since the late 1960’s to adorn buildings with his maniacal style. Zagar and his wife came to Philadelphia after working in Peru in the Peace Corps. The artist fell into a depression that his artwork helped him tame. By the early 1990s, Zagar was working on abandoned lots near his studio, filling them with his shards of broken pottery, tiles, Mexican folk art, bottles, and wheels. In 2004, the absentee landlord of those properties threatened to sell the land and destroy Zagar’s work.
Artistic and local community members rallied and bought up the land, turning it into the Magic Gardens that visitors can see today. The property isn’t owned by Isaiah Zagar, but everywhere his style manifests. Often inserting himself in his murals as a three-armed nude man wearing a top hat, Isaiah also includes his wife Julia in his renderings. His mosaics have macro-topics, and include words and phrases, along with the shards of mirrors, tiles, old broken plates and other mosaic pieces.
