The Owl House

Fascinating museum of artist Helen Martin's home and art

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The Owl House is a work of outsider art created by Helen Martins between 1945 and 1976. Driven to despair by the dullness of her daily life, she took steps to transform her world with light, colour and texture.

She employed local labourers, most notably Koos Malgas, to help her construct her Camel Yard which she filled with over 300 sculptures of bottle-skirted hostesses, mermaids, camels and pilgrims, all journeying to a mystical east. She described what they made as work and not art.

Miss Helen’s imagination transformed humble materials such as cement, glass, mirrors and wire into a secret, magical world that she shared with few, drawing upon Bible stories, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the Orient, and everyday objects – all of which blended to create a personal cosmology. Martins grew Queen of the Night cacti all over the garden, and for a few weeks every year they explode with creamy-white flowers and light up the night.

Her house was dark inside as was typical of the local houses, so she replaces walls with glass and used mirrors, crushed class and shards to breathe light into it. “In Hebrew and Aramaic, the word “Bethesda” translates as “house of grace” or “house of mercy.” It can also mean “shame” or “disgrace.” In the Gospel of John, the pool of Bethesda is where sick people go to be healed. The aptness of her village’s name couldn’t have escaped Martins. You need to be sick before you are healed; grace means something only if you know about disgrace; there is no light without the dark. ” Rosa Lister.

Her Owl House touched the lives of many while she was alive, even inspiring the playwright Athol Fugard to pen the much-loved play, The Road to Mecca, which was later made into a film.

She is an enigma, destroying correspondence and becoming increasingly isolated as others in the white Christian village thought of her as a witch. With crippling arthritis, depression and loss of vision, she would not be separated from her home, and ended her life instead. It also happened at the time of the year when there was the least light.

Winter times shown. Opens an hour earlier in Summer.

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