Schell Street Walls

The beloved Philadelphia mosaicist Isaiah Zagar has spent much of his life installing elaborate mosaic murals on walls around the city. His former studio, now operated as the nonprofit Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, serves as a site-specific museum of his work and houses workshops, tours, and community events. 

The Magic Gardens are the hot zone for all things Zagar, but Philadelphians also know where to find his lesser-known pieces, like the Schell Street Walls. Vulnerable to vandalism, weather, and development, these community murals are living artifacts, changing with age like the buildings that bear them.

As a young art student in Brooklyn studying painting, Zagar encountered the work of outsider artist Clarence Schmidt, who is known for creating elaborate three-dimensional art environments out of found objects. On a visit to Schmidt’s Woodstock, NY studio, Zagar was profoundly moved by the immersive nature of the work. This marked a pivotal time in Zagar’s life, and he would soon divest from fine arts and move into a folk art practice. He built a relationship with Schmidt and was deeply inspired by his time in Woodstock, thus beginning his work creating art environments. 

On both sides of the 600 block of Schell Street, Zagar’s signature maximalist style blends narrative elements with the surreal and the abstract. For two decades, he taught community workshops while actively creating murals, blending education, performance, and artistic practice in the public sphere. These workshops would start and finish a mural over a single weekend, using many hands to make light work. Many of the remaining pieces on the Schell Street Walls were created by these community projects.

One of the murals on Schell Street is a mosaic designed in honor of the people who died in the terror attacks of 9/11. According to Magic Gardens lore, Zagar had been at work on a mural on September 11, 2001, and when a passerby told him what was happening in New York, he was moved to shift his work-in-progress mural into a narrative piece commemorating the dead.  

Head east to continue your walking tour of Zagar’s work, which is concentrated in South Philadelphia. It is unknown how many pieces may exist on private property, but the list of publicly-viewable work is long enough to keep you occupied all day and then some. Find some of Zagar’s most beloved work as you head east from Schell Street toward the 700 block of S. Reese Street, where you’ll find Homage to Mike Mattio: Master Plumber, then keep going to check out the mural on the Ben Dorfman Building at 324 Kater Street, and finally to South Street to Eye’s Gallery, Zagar’s own folk art gift and curiosities shop.