One of a kind: Owl House

Private Cape Town tours and travel by accredited tour guide, including the Winelands, Township Tours and the Garden Route.

One of my favourite places to visit, the Owl House, home of Helen Martins....I will post my story here that was published a few years ago, I just need to find it...

The small hamlet of Nieu Bethesda is sometimes called "the village left behind in time." To some degree, that is the choice of its inhabitants. For example, the villagers chose to keep their dirt streets, even though the government was willing to pave them. So, you drive miles from Graaff-Reinet on pot-holed, rugged gravel roads to get to Nieu Bethesda. Why go there at all? Because it has also become known as a small artisan village - with an active women's art cooperative, several small…

Helen Martins

Current reviews of film and theatre. Enlightened critique of film and theatre with a philosophical slant, focussing on arts impact on contemporary culture.

Helen Martins’s mesmerising artistic legacy is an economic lifeline for an isolated Karoo dorpie, writes Nerine Dorman.

The first day of Spring sees the launch of the new and updated BigOceanData website. Whitespace have been developing this online presence for the market-leader in Vessel Tracking for the last couple of months. Working closely with the team, the fresh offering better reflects the company’s strong foothold in the shipping tracking and maritime intelligence … Continued

The Owl House, Helen Martins

“On a cold winters' morning in 1976, at the age of seventy-eight, Helen Martins took her own life by swallowing caustic soda.” (From the biography of Helen Martins on the official Owl House Foundation site http://www.owlhouse.co.za/) So ended the tragic yet somehow beautiful life of a colourful character whose artistic vision and psychological depth went mostly unnoticed by her neighbours in the dusty, out-of-the-way Great Karoo village of Nieu Bethesda. Helen Martins, who went on to create…