Rustic Art, Calvinia – a weird world in the Karoo

By Roxanne Reid
There’s something in the water of South Africa's Karoo that grows bizarre places and wacky people. Or maybe it's just that wide open spaces lure free spirits whose brains are wired a little differently. Next time you’re in the area, stop at Calvinia’s Rustic Art tucked away from the main drag and you’ll unearth the kind of thing I mean – a weird world in the Karoo.

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​The Karoo is bursting with ancient fossils, sheep and dusty little towns. It’s a place of wide blue skies, dirt roads to nowhere and a booming silence. If you slow down and take the time to look beneath the surface, you’ll meet wonderfully eccentric people and discover that strange things happen in the Karoo. There’s not much I love more than to slot wacky places like the Tankwa padstal or Williston Mall into a road trip through the heartland of South Africa.

Rustic Art in Calvinia’s Stigling Street is a similar journey into a fun and funky mind. 

​It was a sizzling Sunday afternoon. The street was deserted and quiet, not another soul about. But when we pulled up and got out of the car, the neighbourhood dogs broke into a clamour of territorial ​yapping and bawling to express their disapproval.

The pavement of Rustic Art was thronged with bits and pieces from rusted trucks, cars and bicycles to a compilation of signs, shoes and succulents. But this was no jumble; it had been orchestrated with sharp eye for quirky fun and to hint at Karoo stories from the old days.

A rusted Austin and the front half of a faded green Mercedes truck lay comfortably on the pavement, an old Studebaker sign not far away. Corroded bicycles lined up on a flat roof, some with satchels still clipped into the carriers. Enamel basins pockmarked with rust were nailed to the wall not far from rolls of barbed wire oxidised to a chocolate-and-ginger finish. A rusted wheelbarrow was now a sign for Rustic Art, which combines rusted art, a ‘hippy shop’, a bakery and a self-catering guesthouse.

Conked-out shoes danced a conga-line between the ‘found art’ installation and the hard black tar of the municipal pavement. Most of the shoes were black or nondescript greyish, with the odd gaudy orange or pink one flashing like a Vegas showgirl. 

Here a pitchfork stuck to the wall, there a wooden chair with a charred seat. An old black-and-white AA sign pointed the way to the far-flung Karoo towns of Williston, Brandvlei and Sutherland, and part of an old scooter was bellied out on the ground.

​A wide gate made of bits of rusted metal had part of a blue-green truck door slipped in for good measure – an inspired door-within-a-door structure. On either side of the gate, a giant ceramic insulator from a power line spiralled into the sky. 

A truck with an oil drum holding a withered plant where its engine should have been, the metal rim of a wheel sprouting succulents, a pot plant hanging from the roof inside half a truck – these were some of the living, breathing characters we met. There were old metal signs for Africa too – a BP farmer service sign, a cherry-red sign peddling Joko tea, an old road sign promising Putsonderwater was just 46 miles away.

A Shell fuel pump, its solid red faded to pale pink by the Karoo sun, was adorned with sun-dried wildebeest skulls and a sign saying, ‘What the frack Shell, don’t frack the Karoo.’ It was a reminder that Karoo folk don’t take kindly to the idea of a big corporate coming here to pump chemicals into their rocks and ground water, and generally wrecking their ancient and much-loved land.

The truth needs no explanation, says the sign

Camera clicking frenziedly, my hubby-photographer-person tried to get a wide-angle shot to give a sense of the scale of the thing, backing up against the fence of the house on the opposite side of the road. A dragon-sized dog exploded from nowhere and bellowed at him in indignation. He got such a skrik he nearly dropped the camera.

​It’s almost too much to take in at once – and that was just what we could see from the road. Being Sunday in the sleepy Karoo, the place was shut up tight and the chance of exploring the garden or inside the ‘Hippy Shop’ or even meeting Dirk and Sonja van Rensburg, the owner-creators of this crazy space, simply wasn’t on the day’s menu.

But what a cracking excuse to come back again on a weekday to visit the other-worldly planet of Rustic Art.

Need to know
1. Find Rustic Art at 39 Stigling Street, Calvinia. If you’re approaching on the main road (R27) from Cape Town, turn left into Dorp Street then left again at the next corner into Stigling Street. Believe me, you can’t miss it.

2. Book a night or two at a self-catering apartment (R750 for two people) or room with bathroom (R600 for two). You might even be able to talk the owners into pandering to your drumming or pebble walking desires (for an extra fee).
3. Come hungry and buy a loaf of freshly baked bread from the bakery on the premises.
4. Phone 027 341-1423 or 083 656-8592; email karidecor@kingsley.co.za.

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