Far, far south – and
far away from everywhere – this ‘Mecca’ was built by Helen Martins in the tiny
village of Nieu Bethesda in the dusty Karoo.
It has little to do
with Makkah, the holiest city in Islam, a place she’d never visited. But it has
everything to do with my own ‘Mecca’ which isn’t a place at all...
In 1945, ‘Miss
Helen’ began building her ‘Mecca’, transforming her home using cement
and wire, pieces of glass and plastic, and finely crushed glass which she used
to coat the brightly painted walls and ceilings. Later, with the help of assistants,
she built over 300 sculptures in her garden of owls and camels, and other animals
and figures, almost all facing east.
I can only imagine how
laughably crude and strange – and maybe even a little nightmarish – her fantastic
creations must have seemed to the conservative Christian villagers, inspired as
the sculptures and murals were by the Bible but also by the poetry of Omar
Khayyam and the work of William Blake.
Under Apartheid, her
collaboration and friendship with her assistants, especially Koos Malgas, a farm
labourer from the so-called ‘coloured’ community, only added to her own
Afrikaner community’s disapproval and mistrust.
Although the reclusive
‘Miss Helen’ had little to do with the villagers, once a year she would invite
them into her home, every mural and all the mirrors and brightly coloured
windows illuminated by dozens of lanterns and candles.
However, in 1976, at
the age of 78 she took her life. No one knows for sure why she did it. Her home, known as ‘The Owl
House’, fell into disrepair but in 1996 became a museum and national monument,
and is now visited by the curious and appreciative from around the world.
As a teen, I was
deeply moved by Athol Fugard’s play The Road to Mecca which is based on the
life of Helen Martins and had been drawn to ‘The Owl House’. But, finally
getting to visit years later as a student teacher with a group of teens, it
wasn’t so much the place that inspired me after all – it was the imagination,
determination and hope of the untrained artist behind it.
And, of course, the
hours and hours of creative activity which transformed her home and garden into
this unique ‘Mecca’...