Philadelphia Magic Gardens presents Eustace Mamba’s Stone Soup

Soup for the soul

Stone Soup clearly speaks to PMG’s overall objective. Individually, we all feel isolated and struggling. However, when we join as a community, we support each other, we feed each other, and we strengthen each other. Mamba’s mixed-media style is almost a visualization of the stone soup mentality. He transforms and fuses distinct everyday materials into a visual conglomerate. He deftly incorporates multiple artistic techniques in each of his pieces, including painting, oils, collage, street photography, and sewing. The amalgamation of layers creates densely textured art.

The mixed-media portraits and East Coast cityscapes clearly pulled from Mamba’s tri-state background. He grew up in Queens but received his MA and BFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In New Kid, my favorite piece, Mamba uses fragments of Philly buildings and body parts to construct his subject’s face, all topped by a Phillies baseball cap. The decoupage technique conflated with a paint medium showcases brilliant depth. While Wild Eyes and Heat Wave are two other equally inspiring mixed media portraits, other odes to Philly culture include Philly Couple, Portrait off Spruce Street, and Rittenhouse MK. Pepper Pot clearly inspired the stone soup label with pencil drawings of public transportation, brightly colored images of row houses, actual food coupons, and banners sporting “all about love.”

Philly Magic Gardens remains one of my favorite Philadelphia institutions due to Isaiah Zagar’s striking mosaic art. But PMG’s ongoing dedication to BIPOC, female-identifying, and LGBTQIA+ members is even more critical in contemporary US culture. The Stone Soup exhibition, curated by PMG’s exhibitions manager Chelsey Luster, would’ve been culturally significant in 2024, but now it’s positively revolutionary.

At top: Eustace Mamba's The New Kid 2. (Image courtesy of PMG.)