Infinity Dwells In The Karoo

Karoo INFINITY DWELLS IN THE

Freedom hangs in the crisp air and runs to the horizon. In Nieu Bethesda, Helen Martins’ house attracts those who wish to learn how she gained personal freedom.

By Lisa Wiedeman

It’s best to leave

NAMIBIA BOTSWANA ZIMBABWE town at dark and wait for the sky to grow green, yellow, orange, while you SOUTH Johannesburg drive. The prickly AFRICA plants appear first Port as shadows, and are Cape Elizabeth slowly painted by Town I N D I A N O C E A N daybreak to reveal dark greens and Karoo earthy browns. On a perfect autumn morning, the grass glistens modestly in the rising sun, and seems to whisper, “good morning, Karoo,” to the seamless sky that stretches beyond the Sneeuberg.

The Karoo is a beautiful place. Infinity resides here, and greets you at every bend in the road. One feels small, but it is not the kind of small that makes you sad. Instead, lightness and forgetfulness overcome you and make you feel that all is well. The mountains bulge and curve like waves waiting to break. One can almost hear their yawns in the morning — waking the velddiere who quietly go about the business of survival. Freedom hangs in the crisp air. So many fields and fields and fields that run to the horizon and joyously greet the azure. But all is not as it seems. Freedom does not necessarily permeate the boundaries of towns, or the minds of people.

Perhaps one village that knows this too well is Nieu Bethesda — a tiny place that one reaches only when the road runs out. Now home to artists and people keeping small coffee shops, mainly for the tourists, the village makes a living from its sad past.

Helen Martins was born in Nieu Bethesda in 1897 and lived there most of her life. After the deaths of her parents in the early 1940s, “Miss Helen” also struggled to cope with being abandoned by her husband. She was viewed as an outsider in the highly conservative, apartheid-informed, village, and she became increasingly reclusive. Her association with nie-Blankes and her

unconventional art made conservatives suspicious. Finding little love in the outside community, Miss Helen turned inward and began to transform her house and garden.

“Welcome, please come in. Everything is just as I left it.” One enters the Owl House, and her spirit guides one through it. “That’s my tub, these are my owls … my candles. I’m so happy you came.”

With the help of her friend, Koos Malgas, Miss Helen created more than 300 cement-and-glass statues that present various scenes depicting the Nativity, the philosophies of Omar Khayyam, and owls of varying sizes and positions. Everything points east. The Camel Yard expresses a yearning for love, and represents her search for freedom from the hurtful Nieu Bethesda community.

“Sometimes I light the candles, and everything sparkles.”

Helen Martins was an artist, deemed South Africa’s foremost “Outsider Artist.” Her house in Nieu Bethesda attracts a steady flow of tourists throughout the year. She was a woman, saturated with irony — treated with contempt when all she sought was love, people falling in love with her only after her death.

The Karoo gives one a feeling of smallness, but if one is not careful, little things will make you wish you had paid more attention.

The Karoo catches visitors by surprise and offers opportunities to explore and be free.

And oh, how they fall in love! The glassspeckled statues dance in the sunlight, exaggerated eyes drink you in, arms call you and you become enamored with the magnificent soul behind the tragic figure.

“I crush the glass and keep the pieces in jars. My pantry has more glass in it than food. Do you like the colours? They’re everywhere …”

The walls in her modest house twinkle. Miss Helen loved light and plastered crushed glass to the walls. Owl-shaped candle-holders litter her home.

She is an inspiration to those who walk the line between mainstream and periphery. The freedom she created for herself arises from personal consideration and a struggle to become the sculptor of one’s own life. It seems the more she filled her home with her art, the more pressure she applied to the cage that had been placed over her.

“They didn’t want me here. The village was their space, and I wasn’t welcome, so I made my own. My art became my life, my life became my art.”

Bulging, creaking at the seams, her suicide shattered the cage. A concoction of crushed glass and caustic soda was a final irony.

She gave New Bethesda her art, her life, an industry, but I doubt the little boys who stand with the horses, waiting for the tourists, know her story.

It is among the great stories of our time — more so because the lessons we take from her struggle can be applied to everybody.

In the face of loneliness, suspicion and tragedy, Miss Helen crafted a fairyland for herself, and created her own brand of freedom.

What we see with Miss Helen is the conscious re-working of one’s life and the process of personal transformation. Some authors, such as Michel Foucault, have promoted the use of writing to aid this process of self-transformation, and we can see Miss Helen using her art for the same end. After all, very little difference exists between the artistic processes of writing and sculpting. Both begin with a daunting blankness and end in life. Paying attention to one’s life — as though it were an artwork — is a process that dates back to the Ancient Greeks who internalized techne tou biou. The craft of life. It is in this crafting of one’s life that one should find freedom. Often, people are misled into believing that politics, bureaucracy and grand-narratives will deliver them to freedom; however, these things often trap a person within a web of rhetoric.

It is possible that the process of turning inward, and finding a personal freedom — rather than focusing on liberation rhetoric — is a more valuable way of achieving a degree of happiness.

As one leaves Miss Helen’s house, the strange figures peek over the fence to see one off. The owls stare sadly, and other characters stretch out their arms, calling one back.

“It’s frightening out there, don’t go!” they seem to say. “Come back inside. We’ll keep you company, and make you happy.”

However, everything is still in the beautiful Karoo mornings. The grass glistens in the rising sun, and the seemless sky stretches beyond the Sneeuberg.

It seems that all is well.

Freedom is in the air, a sense of infinity that brings lightness and joy.