Isaiah Zagar

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, Zagar's largest South Street mosaic work, is a three-dimensional, immersive piece of installation art and a museum gallery space.

The mosaics are inlaid with poetry, quotes, names of artists who have inspired Zagar, and portraits and forms of people and animals.

Zagar says of his personal creative inspirations, In 1959, when I was 19 years old, I was introduced to the folk art environment of Clarence Schmidt, My Mirrored Hope, Woodstock, New York, USA.

Because that exhibition included assemblages of artists like Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, Kurt Schwitters, Antonio Gaudi alongside of untrained brickaleurs Clarence Schmidt, Simon Rodia and Ferdinand Cheval that gave me as a trained artist the rationale to include their concepts as manifestations of fine art.

[3]Zagar began the work that would become Philadelphia's Magic Gardens by cleaning up two vacant lots next to a property he purchased in 1994.

Part of Zagar's Magic Garden.
The front of the Painted Bride Art Center , showing Zagar's Skin of the Bride mosaic, which covers the entire building; the text along the top says "The Bride has many suitors, even", a reference to Marcel Duchamp 's The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even