Philadelphia-based mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar, known for creating mirrored dreamscapes on buildings across the city, died Thursday at his home of complications from heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, according to Magic Gardens, a nonprofit art center he founded. He was 86.
Zagar’s hundreds of public mosaics, many adorning the South Street corridor where he lived with his wife, Julia, transformed the city’s visual landscape and drew thousands of visitors to his immersive installation each year. His work with broken glass, tile, mirrors and found objects stands as a permanent mark on Philadelphia despite ongoing threats from development.
Born in Philadelphia, Zagar returned to the city in 1968 with Julia after serving with the Peace Corps in Peru. Over the decades that followed, he created public mosaics across the city’s neighborhoods, turning walls, alleyways and building facades into repositories of color, reflection and found-object artistry. The South Street corridor, where he and Julia settled, became the epicenter of his practice.
“He loved South Street, the city of Philadelphia, and the community fostered here with all of his heart,” said Emily Smith, executive director of Magic Gardens.
Salvage and Transformation
His art process was rooted in salvage and transformation. Zagar gathered broken glass, tile fragments, mirrors and whatever other materials the city offered, reassembling them into compositions that caught light and returned it fractured, multiplied, dreamlike. The pieces adorned buildings large and small, from storefronts to residential walls, making his aesthetic an inescapable part of Philadelphia’s visual landscape.
Magic Gardens
Magic Gardens, the immersive installation he created on South Street, became his best-known work. Visitors walked through chambers lined entirely with mirrors and mosaics, losing themselves in the fractured reflections. The installation draws thousands of visitors annually, introducing many to Zagar’s artistic vision.
Preservation Challenges
Preservation of his work has emerged as an ongoing challenge. Development pressure threatened some of his mosaics, most notably a large piece on an Old City building that housed The Painted Bride Art Center, which he worked on throughout the 1990s. Demolition of the building began in December, though efforts were made to salvage portions of Zagar’s mosaic work.
Art as Resilience
Zagar continued making art throughout periods of mental health struggle and, later, Parkinson’s disease. “While Isaiah lived with ups and downs of mental health struggles, and later with Parkinson’s Disease, he endlessly turned to his art-making to not only express himself, but as a tool to survive,” Smith said.
He is survived by Julia, whom he called his muse and artistic partner, and two sons, including Jeremiah Zagar, a filmmaker who directed a 2008 documentary about his father, “In A Dream.”