Isaiah Zagar(born 1939)

Isaiah Zagar is a Philadelphia mosaic artist.

What is Mosaic Art

• Mosaic is art made by laying down small pieces of tile to form pictures.

• Mosaics are 4,000 years old!

• The earliest mosaics were patterns on sidewalks, made from colored stones.

• This lion was made around 300 BC (more than 2,000 years ago).

• What different color pebbles are used here?

• Pieces called "tesserae" (TES uh ree) were used to give extra detail and color to mosaics.

• Using small, even tiny, tesserae meant that mosaics could imitate, or look like, paintings.

• Which colors did the artist choose to create the eyes?

• Look how the artist uses black tiles to mark parts of the face.

• Which parts of the face are marked by the black tiles?

• This is a mosaic of a seahorse.

• Notice how white tesserae are used to show the horse’s details.

• Do you see its sea-monster tail?

Zagar opened an art gallery on South Street where he created his first mosaic to attract customers.

Zagar began buying old vacant and abandoned properties on the same street so he could create more mosaic murals.

Much of Zagar's work is completed free of charge.

Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, is Zagar's largest South Street mosaic work.

He wanted to create a magical place filled with his art.

"I built this sanctuary to be inhabited by my ideas and my fantasies.“ Isaiah Zagar

To date he has completed over 130 of these murals!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEpXlmdyJ4A