Isaiah Zagar is a Philadelphia artist known for his mosaic murals. Mosaic art involves arranging small tiles or pieces of material to form images and dates back 4000 years. Zagar opened an art gallery where he created his first mosaic to attract customers, then began buying abandoned properties on the street to make more murals. His largest work is Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, built as a magical sanctuary filled with his mosaic art, where he has completed over 130 murals.

1. Isaiah Zagar
(born 1939)

2. Isaiah Zagar is a Philadelphia mosaic artist.

3. 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?

4. • 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.

5. • 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?

6. • 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?

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

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

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

13. Philadelphia's
Magic Gardens,
is Zagar's largest
South Street
mosaic work.
He wanted to
create a magical
place filled with
his art.

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

17. To date he has completed over 130 of these
murals!

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