Isaiah Zagar, Magician of Tile, Magician of Glass
Rest in Power to the artist who made me fall in love with a city
In the first edition of the official Philly Tarot Deck, the Hermit card is represented by an old bearded man holding a stick in front of a mosaic wall. The mosaic is the characteristic entrance to the Philadelphia Magic Gardens on South and 11th, and the man is Isaiah Zagar, creator of the Magic Gardens— a unique and Philly-specific style of quasi-guerilla mosaic art, spread across walls throughout the city, especially around South Street. Truth be told I think the Hermit doesn’t quite suit Isaiah, who was a common presence in Philadelphia with his wife Julia— hardly a reclusive hermit. I think the Magician would have been a better card, because of Isaiah’s ability to alchemize seeming detritus into transcendent art. (And there was something of the trickster personality in Isaiah, too, but I’m getting ahead of myself.) On February 19, Isaiah died.
I first encountered the Magic Gardens by accident. It must have been in 2008 when I took myself to see a film at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago; I’d do this periodically while visiting home during holiday breaks. The film was Jeremiah Zagar’s In a Dream— a documentary about his father, Isaiah Zagar, creator of the Magic Gardens.
Before this film, I heard very little about Philly except for the cheesesteaks. Earlier that year I had gone to Philly for the first time with one of my best friends, a day trip from New York to see the giant Frida Kahlo exhibit opening at the PMA. I must have decided to see In a Dream because the soundtrack was by The Books, which were my favorite band of the era (and continue to be one of my favorite bands of all time). I was utterly enraptured by the film, which was as playful, strange, exuberant, and meandering as the art it represented. Like my favorite documentaries ( cough Vertov cough ) it incorporated stop-motion animation and imaginative dreamscapes. It didn’t shirk from darkness, either, portraying Isaiah as a brilliant artist and also a difficult man, one whose bipolar disorder, incessant workaholism, and adultery (Isaiah divorced and then re-married his wife) created a complicated father-son dynamic.
The film provides a very quick description of the history of the Gardens themselves. In short: in the late 1960s, hippie artists Isaiah and Julia Zagar move to the Philly South Street neighborhood, joining a community of artists who fought against the Crosstown Expressway that would have demolished the neighborhood. They started taking buildings slated for demolition and covering them in mosaics. The highway is never built, and South St becomes an art district. In 1991, Isaiah begins working on the vacant lots next to his studio and in 14 years creates the museum part of the magic gardens. In 2004, an absentee landlord tried to demolish the artwork, and the massive community outcry led to the creation of the Magic Gardens nonprofit, which raised funds to save the site. The museum opened officially in 2008, the same year that Jeremiah released his film.
Yet the film remained firmly rooted in my subconscious, and I couldn’t wait to see these Magic Gardens in the real world. A few years later, I found myself visiting Philly again. It was 2011 and I was in one of those complicated friend dynamics where there was mysterious tension which had no place. My friends had no interest in the Magic Gardens, so I absconded to explore on my own, and experienced the most magic I had felt in, probably, years. I spent upwards of two hours taking photos of a space which was about as large as a three bedroom apartment, constantly finding new perspectives— new quotes (Apollinaire! Malraux!), new manifestos, new autobiographical details about the Zagar family, new tcotchkes, new protruding genital artifacts. I made it my Facebook cover photo and it remained the Magic Gardens for many years.
When I learned I would be moving to Philly to teach at Penn, the choice of neighborhood was a no brainer. Of course I had to be near the Magic Gardens. Thankfully, the city is covered in them, so I had no shortage of options (although I did hear a developer once refer to them as a “cancer on the city”— a blackpilled capitalist sentiment if I’ve ever heard one). I spent the next three years with a membership to the Gardens (only $25, at the time, for educators!), taking every Philly visitor there and gleefully pointing out my favorite sections. I went on a Juneteenth tour of the Magic Gardens in 2020, and learned the complicated gentrification history of the Magic Gardens art. South St used to be a solidly Black neighborhood, and the museum followed the trajectory of much gentrification by crafitng an “artistic renaissance” through the influx of bohemian newcomers. However, the Zagars also fought against the demolition of the neighborhood, and frequently (always?) feature Indigenous artists, especially Latin American, in their galleries, putting up their pieces for sale. They clearly still share political commitments with the leftists in the city. I found the tour thoughtful and frank, and appreciated the candor around gentrification and artistic spaces. I took the tour guide’s card, thinking I would help organize a troupe of Penn freshmen to come see the tour, but couldn’t imagine a proper fundraising strategy. I also lost the card.
I also make the Magic Gardens the subject of one of my very first TikTok videos (RIP):
Fast forward another few years, and I’m about to leave Philadelphia for my sabbatical year in Los Angeles, where I would write my book. My friend L was visiting from rural Wisconsin, and I knew this might be the last time she’d be in Philly with me. I decided to organize a big friend hang day to do— what else?— some psychedelics. The plan was to wander around my beautiful, magical neighborhood during a beautiful, magical April day— one of those perfect Philadelphia Spring days where the cherry blossoms have all seemingly bloomed simultaneously across the city. Of course we started our trip in the Magic Gardens. My friends D and G live a short walk away, and in the midst of an already trippy experience we found a tiny secret alley that seemingly linked our two houses— an alley far too small for cars to enter, but perfect for five zonked out thirty-somethings to spend probably an entire hour in. The entire little alley seemed to be full of— what else?— Magic Gardens (they truly are everywhere!), and ivy. So much ivy.
Later that night as the magic started wearing off, we headed back to my place to avoid sudden April thunderstorms and I told my friends about the Zagar film, which I had, at that point, recreated word for word, despite having not seen it in… 15 years?? I decided to torrent it, and we watched the entire thing, the five of us sprawled out on an unmade sofabed. The story, however, doesn’t end there.
A few days later, I was just putting my shoes on to go for a run when L walks in with a coffee and a giant, heavy work of art, about three feet wide— an entire, real, Magic Gardens artwork, framed and all!! Now, L is herself a magical fairy creature of sorts (and is probably reading this, hi!), able to mysteriously befriend everyone she meets or even briefly glances at, for better or for worse (mostly better. Real ENFP energy, iykyk). It turns out that while I was asleep, she had wandered over to get a bagel at Korshak’s (RIP) in South Philly, on my recomendation. She got two bagels (everything with scallion cream cheese, obviously the ideal combo) and wandered around the neighborhood. She happened to notice an old man sitting on a bench and started up a conversation. Trying to be polite (and in classic L fashion), she asked if he wanted the other bagel. He said yes. Eventually he asked if she wanted to take a tour of his studio, and then it dawned on her that this was Isaiah Zagar, the same artist from the documentary! Eventually he gave her a piece of art (for free!!!), which had, to quote L, “lots of breasts and vaginas” because she had just come out as a lesbian and divorced her husband. Unable to bring the heavy artwork back to Wisconsin, she then bequeathed it to me. I placed it immediately in the perfect nook in my non-working fireplace. I am deeply grateful for L and also insanely jealous that she got to spend the morning with one of my all-time heroes.
Fast forward two months. I am about to leave Philly. On the urging of D, she and I decide to do something, possibly, quite insane: follow L’s April 2022 Isaiah-sighting day to the letter. We would go to Korshak’s early in the morning, grab an extra bagel, look for an elderly man in a chair nearby, offer him a bagel, and see if he would give us a tour of his studio. Same bagel order. Same day of the week.
Reader: it worked. The bagels, the finding of the man, the giving of the bagel— it all worked. On my last few weeks in Philly, a hot early June day, we spent three hours touring Isaiah’s studio and learning how to make art. (I found the breaking of the tiles deeply satisfying and the placing of the tiles into cement surprisingly hard!) We learned his technique, and spent so much time talking about everything. I told Isaiah about my marriage, my job, my forthcoming move. He was a classic 1960s hippie with a strong, manic workaholic flair— an odd combo. There was something of the Marcusian free-love 1968 vibe to him, and occasionally he would say something a tad off color for our era, but would have been familiar in a late sixties context. I saved his number in my phone. He asked to pose for the contact photo.
D and G had, it turned out, a space in front of their house that was completely blank, and seemed perfect for a Magic Gardens mural. Over the next couple of weeks, while I was packing up my life in Philly, D and G coordinated with Isaiah to make this happen— which, as it turned out, only needed about $500 for supplies, because Isaiah would work regardless. He needed to work, in a truly mad (and I mean, mad) way, which both horrified me and won my deep respect. On my last day in Philly, I placed a few tiles on the wall with Isaiah, brought one back home with me (which then lived with me in LA, and still lives on my mantle in Philly), and I gave Isaiah a copy of my graphic novel. I later learned that when he met my (now-ex) husband, he told him that I had better hair.
I had long wanted to tell this story in some better form— a comic, especially. Perhaps, with a mosaic background, and splashes of color. I wanted to interview Isaiah about his life. I wanted to write about Jeremiah’s film. I wanted to do so much that I didn’t get a chance to, but I was so glad to have gotten to meet him when I did. I’m so glad, also, that it was my friends who led me to him, and that chance brought us all together, in that magical way that it always does.
Rest in power, old friend.
xo-J
OMG! What a downright magical story!