An exclusive walkthrough of Isaiah Zagar’s South Philly studio before it opens for tours

On a narrow residential block of South Philly, mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar’s studio has sat quietly for about five years, the glittering walls of multicolored tiles gathering dust and cobwebs as the kiln stayed silent. The Philadelphia legend transformed the former mechanic warehouse inside and out since buying it in 2006, before old age forced him to put down his tools. In 2023, he donated the space to the organization running his popular outdoor maze of mosaics on South Street, the Philadelphia Magic Gardens.

Now Philadelphia Magic Gardens will breathe new life into his studio on 10th and Watkins Street, opening it as a satellite location for workshops, classes, artist residencies, and small, invite-only tours. Unlike the gardens, which attract 100,000 visitors a year, the Watkins Street Studio will serve as a secondary location with limited attendance.

“We really don’t think this should be the Magic Gardens version 2.0; it has to be different,” said Emily Smith, executive director of Philadelphia Magic Gardens. “We want to think of it as a new community that we want to welcome into the space. It will definitely be a more subdued, still pretty quiet space … We really want this to be a creative space where people are learning, and it’s more focused specifically for education.”

Zagar, 85, and his wife, Julia, bought the building just south of Passyunk Square so the artist would have a private space to create. Last year, Zagar was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which has severely impacted his ability to continue making work. The couple decided that the studio could be better used for arts education, so they gifted the warehouse to Philadelphia Magic Gardens.

Over the past several months, the staff has cleaned out the two-floor space and begun organizing and cataloging the massive archive of Zagar’s artworks and tools inside. The walls and ceiling on the first floor are covered in dazzling tiles of various faces and naked bodies, with rows of sculptures made from glass bottles, plates, and clay. Dozens of eyes follow visitors, including portraits of Zagar and his wife as well as Jesus’ disciples (with Judas in sunglasses).

“Cities were meant to be gardens in which to grow beautiful people,” Zagar wrote above a doorway outside.

The mosaicist no longer creates new work on his own, but twice a week he visits the studio, where Smith and PMG preservation facilities manager Stacey Holder push him to draw and paint. They’re still learning the full history of the space, which they plan to include in an upcoming oral history project.

“There’s good days and bad days [working with him], but it just feels like a really valuable time to be encouraging Isaiah to continue to work,” said Holder of the deeply personal and sometimes emotional process. “I hope that somebody would do it for me, you know? He’s still a valuable person, a valuable artist, for all of us.”

Preserving Zagar’s artworks and legacy has become the primary goal for Smith and Holder, who have seen firsthand how encroaching development across Philadelphia has endangered his sprawling mosaic murals.

In 2023, developers slated Old City’s former Painted Bride Art Center for demolition to replace it with an apartment building, provoking outrage in the local arts community who wanted to preserve Zagar’s 7,000-square-foot mosaic, Skin of the Bride, which adorned the building’s exterior.

PMG staff and community members spent two painstaking weeks taking chisels and hammers to the wall; while the piece can never be recreated, PMG plans to open an exhibit dedicated to the artwork’s history and painful loss next spring. In one of the studio’s rooms sit stacks of some 60 bankers boxes containing hundreds of tiles they salvaged from the former Painted Bride Art Center in 2023.

Smith and Holder say they never want that kind of failure to happen again. Zagar has been chiseling mosaics across the city since 1968 and there are roughly 220 mosaic murals in Philadelphia, most of which are on private property, vulnerable to demolition. Last year, contractors destroyed a mural on South Mildred Street in Bella Vista, prompting Philadelphians — who are fiercely protective of Zagar’s iconic mosaics — to protest. Some artworks are still being discovered, like the hidden murals inside Jim’s Steaks found during renovation earlier this year.

Now that Zagar has mostly stopped producing, Smith says this is the time to focus intently on protecting his work throughout Philadelphia.

“This is such a special thing that’s all ours as Philadelphians. There’s nothing like this anywhere else in the world,” said Smith. “This work is very delicate. It can be destroyed. Development will destroy it … If you don’t take care of it now, it will be gone. Isaiah is no longer making work, and so there’s no way for us to go back in time and protect it as an afterthought.”

With the addition of the Watkins Street Studio, Philadelphia Magic Gardens hopes to create a new community space to inspire all kinds of artists. While the warehouse still needs facility upgrades — including heating and air-conditioning — staff is already planning public programming. Smith says there may be an opportunity to explore Parkinson’s disease and its effects on artists in the future as well.

“We don’t want it to be this exclusive thing; we just want to make sure we can take care of it correctly, of course,” said Smith. “We want there to be an opportunity for the community to be in here. It is a space that comes alive when people are in it.”

On Thursday, Sept. 5, and Saturday, Sept. 7, Philadelphia Magic Gardens will host open houses to invite neighbors and community members to explore inside and tell staffers what they want to see from the new space. The organization will hold monthly studio tours this fall, on Oct. 9, Nov. 9, and Dec. 3. They are also planning a two-part panel mosaic workshop beginning Nov. 7.

The Watkins Street Studio open houses are Thursday, Sept. 5, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday, Sept. 7, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at 1002 Watkins St., Philadelphia.