| The Owlhouse can be found in the small Karoo
village of Nieu-Bethesda in South Africa. It belonged to Helen
Martins, a visionary artist, who turned the rooms of the house
into a shimmering delight of mirrors and coloured walls of crushed
glass. Her back garden, 'The Camel Yard' is filled with different
statues made of concrete and beer bottles. They all face mecca,
a place that Martins found mystical inspiration in, although she
had never been there. Considered an outcast and branded a witch
by some in her own village, she never socialized and with the onset
of arthritis and blindness she committed suicide by drinking arsenic
in her kitchen. The village today prospers from her house which
has been turned into a museum in order to try and preserve her
crumbling works of art. |
