In the Karoo, the saying goes, all strife is about water, but for the past year the people of Nieu-Bethesda have been proving the adage wrong with a small town feud about art.
The village of 60, perhaps 70, permanent residents have fallen out on Facebook and threatened court action over the future of the Owl House, Helen Martins’ home and cement garden of mermaids, camels and sages on the outskirts near the Gats river.
In the four decades since her suicide, the sculptures have survived the sun and occasional snow Martins dreaded, thanks to what artist Anne Graaff calls volunteerism – the often unpaid efforts of scholars and enthusiasts, plus donations from PPC, the cement manufacturer.
“We were in the house today and Melvyn (Minnaar) turned to me and said it’s a miracle it’s still standing. And it really is. We expected it to last 20 years, ” Graaff, who has written extensively on Martins, said a fortnight ago.
They brought Koos Malgas, Martins’ long-time assistant, back to repair the works in the 1990s, but there were years too of hapless neglect and letting visitors roam free, not only in the sculpture yard but through the rooms with her feminine clutter and never-worn finery.
Art critic Minnaar thinks the house cannot take any further traffic and should be shut, leaving visitors to view it through the windows in the fashion of the Hemingway museum in San Francisco de Paula in Cuba.
“I would say the house itself has reached a point where it should be closed now. It is extremely fragile, too much so to let the public in.”
The house belongs to the Camdeboo municipality, which has leased it to the Owl House Foundation since 1996, but nobody has been able to locate the contract for several years. This adds to the troubles of the foundation, directed by local tea room owner Terry Winship, which has turned outsider art lovers from here to London against it by making a series of structural changes to the Owl House.
Architect Gerrie Horn, commissioned by the Eastern Cape Provincial Heritage Resources Agency to investigate complaints, said that was done without the necessary permits for altering a building older than 60 years, still the only heritage law that applies to the Owl House.
His report noted a hole was knocked into the southern boundary wall for a gate, and the dry stone wall on the western side started to crumble after its coping was removed. Burglar bars have gone up on the interior walls Martins covered with coloured crushed glass, and somebody painted the cloak of one of the wise men in the Camel Yard.
The changes fueled the “coffee shop wars”, so called because a few of the Owl House Interested and Affected Parties also own cafes in the village. For the group, the foundation has disturbed Martins’ flow of meaning by moving the entrance from her stoep to its offices along New Street.
Visitors are no longer greeted by her familiar owls, independent museum and heritage advisor Melinda Bekker wrote in a letter of complaint, but by a side view of the sculpture procession in the yard heading to a spiritual (but geographically false) East that Martins’ students are still trying to map.
One of 16 experts Graaff invited to Nieu-Bethesda to help advise the foundation on a way forward charitably countered: “Whatever one thinks of the foundation, they do try. Helen herself painted her scupltures, though perhaps not lurid purple.”
While the group met for four days in late September, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) was – again – weighing a request to declare the property seen as the country’s foremost example of outsider art a Grade 1 National Heritage site. Athol Fugard sent a letter advocating full heritage protection and may prove a significant figure in how the story plays out.
Horn’s report draws a timeline of failed applications, starting in 1982, to secure official protection that reads like a reflection of Martins’ alienation. In 2000, the year Malgas died, the last provisional protection declaration lapsed. But heritage status at last looks imminent. Last week, Greg Ontong, the manager of SAHRA’s built environment unit, said it was being “revisited and in review” and would be discussed at a council meeting of the agency in mid-October.
“I have received a direct order to proceed with provisional declaration in preparation for full declaration,” he said, adding that it entailed defining in greater depth the significance of what Martins left behind.
For SAHRA, this includes the intangible value of the Owl House and the resonance it carries, and the fact that it is no longer pristine does not preclude protection.
“Apart from the materiality of the site, you also look at the significance it has acquired. Athol Fugard wrote ‘The Road to Mecca’ about the Owl House and it received international acclaim, this inadvertently granted the site added international significance or relevance,” Ontong said.
He added that the contested changes could be undone, but said it should be remembered that the Owl House was an organically evolved work.
“The major changes can be reversed, the gate can be removed, but the Owl House evolved … it is not that compromised.”
Art commentator Philip Todres, who chaired meetings of the team of experts, also recalls that restorers have found traces of patchwork fixing by Martins, who worried obsessively about the weather’s impact on her works. He said the team mused that it might also be time to seek heritage status for the rest of the dorp that was founded in 1875 and does not have a fuel pump or an ATM. For that, you have to remember to stop in Graaff-Reinet.
“Nieu-Bethesda must protect the Owl House, but maybe the Owl House should also be protecting Nieu-Bethesda.”
SAHRA is also of the opinion that the two cannot be seen in isolation. Said Ontong: “You cannot issue a declaration without considering the impact of potential development in the village which could compromise the sense of ‘rural village’.”
Graaff suggests that without disturbing its remote setting or robbing the locals of their say, the Owl House might be safer if it got more international input and recognition.
“We are trying to take a huge leap from the volunteerism of the moment, and there is an idea of co-opting people from outside with very targeted expertise as directors, and with Skype they can be anywhere.”
This will go into the report the team is drafting to present to the foundation at its next board meeting in November, by which time all sides may find themselves on more regulated ground.
Emsie Ferreira/African News Agency
