“We made the move”
Artists Tamar Mason and Mark Attwood moved their studio from Johannesburg to the Lowveld in 2002. Step by step, they set up a sustainable lifestyle, and proved to naysayers that the move was not “financial suicide”.
The Artists’ Press has moved to White River…
Just 14 km west of White River, on the Brondal Road, a 4 ha property lies snugly among farms where macadamias, avocados, lemons and tilapia fish are cultivated. After entering the gate at The Artists’ Press, there’s a studio on your left. A few metres ahead lies a sizeable dam under a treetop canopy. Hidden among greenery are the main house and a guest house, Waterfield, and behind the buildings lies Eden: a fruit and vegetable forest.
“We have macadamias, pecans, mangoes, grapes, bananas, guavas, pomegranates, pineapples, starfruit, apples, litchis, dragon fruit, cinnamon and pepper bark, to name a few,” Tamar Mason says while Moya, a brindle greyhound, and Lima, the new puppy, welcome us enthusiastically. Old souls Emma the Jack Russell and Doddo the cat are a little less sprightly with their greetings.
“We plant whichever veggies grow seasonally in the Lowveld, and get half of our food from the garden.”
One of the reasons Tamar and her partner, Mark Attwood, moved to the Lowveld was to live more sustainably and to “get out of the craziness of innercity Joburg”.
Tamar was born and schooled in the city. She dropped out of Wits University and completed her academic career in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, writing her final BA exams through Unisa. She then lived in Mochudi for three years, followed by a year at the Kuru Art Project in D’kar, a small settlement in western Botswana. Here she worked with groups of women, focusing on crafts and business skills.
On returning to South Africa in 1992, she spent 10 years working on community projects across the country and in Namibia – tending to her tiny veggie patch in suburban Joburg when opportunities arose.
“I was doing work with the Department of Arts and Culture in Mpumalanga. Our daughter, Maru, was two, and our son, Simon, was about to start primary school. We didn’t want to raise them in Joburg,” Tamar says.
White River seemed an easy distance from the city for artists to travel to, and its proximity to Mozambique and Eswatini appealed. The area had good infrastructure – and the lovely climate was a bonus.
“Artists love coming down here for the peace and quiet. We have fewer distractions than we had at the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios in Newtown. We have quality time here, as well as quantity time.”
Mark and Tamar enjoy being weekend guides to visiting artists staying at the guest house, and getting to know them. The studio offers space for drawing, a letterpress for proofing and two lithograph presses for making print editions. “We print off limestone blocks that are about 100 years old,” Tamar says. “The artists draw directly on the stone.”
Lithography is a method of printing based on the principle that oil and water don’t mix. >
“We place the stone on the press, keep it damp with a sponge, and roll on grease ink with a hand roller. It is the only printing process where what you see is what you get. With other processes that are engraved or carved – like linocut – it is very difficult to see what you are going to end up with,” Mark says.
For the business to remain viable, Mark and Tamar select and invite artists to work with them, usually collaborating with one or two at a time. William Kentridge, Anton Kannemeyer and Karin Daymond are among the big names they have welcomed at the studio.
MARK LEFT HIGH SCHOOL at the end of Standard 8 (Grade 10) and began his technical training in commercial printmaking at Wits Technikon. As a qualified machine minder, he worked for a year in the UK while applying at the Tamarind Institute at the University of New Mexico for a two-year programme in lithography – which Tamar credits as being the best and most thorough in the world.
Insufficient funds – and anti South African sentiment abroad during the ’80s – led to his acceptance only after applying twice. Of all first year students who trained in professional printing, only two were selected for advanced master printer studies.
“Mark was the first qualified master printer in lithography in Africa,” Tamar says. “Upon his return to South Africa he attended business classes at the Wits Business School. After my stay in Botswana, I told Mark I’d only spend another year in Joburg … but eventually it took 10 years to get him out of there.”
The family enjoyed smallscale composting and recycling in Johannesburg, but the move to the smallholding allowed them to take their sustainability project to the next level. Now they have hens for eggs, beehives,and a small worm farm for the studio’s waste. The worm tea – a liquid concentrate of worm compost – is used to boost microbiological activity in the soil.
A waste-management company collects their recycling, and they make eco-bricks for a project managed by a local school, Penryn College. The family has been vegetarian for 11 years – Simon follows a vegan diet – and invasive plants are used in making their own drawing charcoal.
“The most chemical thing we use in the house is Sunlight dishwashing liquid and Chemico, otherwise we clean with bicarb and vinegar,” Tamar says. “Our body and hand soap comes from a small producer who uses free-range cattle lard… You can get completely obsessive about sustainability,” she admits.
They have solar power and solar geysers. A micro-hydro turbine
generates electricity from the canal flowing through their property as part of an irrigation system linking Witklip Dam with surrounding farms. They used sandbags to construct the building that houses the turbine. And they designed and built the studio and its stoep using materials effective in absorbing, storing, and releasing the sun’s heat when needed to naturally provide the interior with comfortable temperatures year-round.
“We are still grid-tied with Eskom, but we have brought our consumption down from 175 kilowatt-hours per day to 210 kilowatt-hours per month,” Tamar says. “For environmental reasons, it is actually better to be grid-tied,” Mark adds, pointing out that they would ohterwise have had to use a generator if they weren’t, or build a system big enough to meet their needs during overcast weather. “You lose fourfifths of your output on sunny days, because you don’t need all that power. Being grid-tied means you can export unused electricity for use by the nearest neighbouring household.”
The couple admits to having “a dirty little secret”. Simon studies art in the US and Maru will join him soon to study politics and environmental sciences – so they have to fly often. “But we plant trees to make up for it!” Tamar says. They plant either indigenous or edible trees in their forest, where they do very little garden maintenance.
OVER THE YEARS, Tamar and Mark have removed about half of their lawn and replaced sections with Mexican carpet grass, which thrives in a subtropical climate, lies flat, grows in shade and needs half the amount of mowing. It also stays greener in the dry months. As the property is situated on a wetland, there’s no need to water the lawn. >
“This was an established Lowveld garden with silky oak, camphor and jacaranda trees. We took out a huge number of exotic trees and used them for firewood,” Tamar says. Since Simon was in his teens, he has been planting strangler figs near exotic ones, allowing them to creep up the trunks and eventually take over.
Mark, Tamar, Maru and Simon’s low-maintenance approach extends to the organic veggie garden. “It is that permaculture idea of circles within circles – trying to get nature to do the work for you,” Mark explains. They used to have a compost heap in a wooden frame, but it needed to be turned once every six months, which is timeconsuming, and also attracted rats.
Then they heard about chicken tractors – moveable chicken pens. “Our entire garden is designed so the chicken tractors fit over the vegetable beds. Kitchen waste is thrown in, the chickens peck through it, eat what they want and bury the rest,” Mark says. “They are fertilising the soil, we don’t have to sort through the compost, they eat the
goggas, and we don’t have any rats. We move the tractors every two weeks. The chickens are also healthier, because they are moved before pathogens such as mites can build up.”
Tamar admits that, with their lifestyle, it sometimes feels as if they are swimming against the current. “We’ve tried to do bartering and community exchange projects where you don’t >
deal with money. It was fun for a while, but it didn’t work… You need more people who think like we do.
“We have noticed a conservative mindset and climate crisis denial in the Lowveld, where some people tend to think God will sort out environmental issues and climate change.”
A BONUS OF LIVING IN THE LOWVELD is the wildlife. Tamar and Mark aren’t keeping track of their bird sightings, but the informal list is long enough to provide birders with a successful Big Year: buff-spotted flufftail, African wood-owl, southern white-faced scops-owl, barn owl, spotted eagle-owl, African fish-eagle, African spoonbill, bat hawk and four kinds of kingfishers among many.
Simon has camera traps set up around the property and lately they have been graced by the presence of side-striped jackal, badger, civet, serval, porcupine, mongoose and bush pig. Simon contributes his sightings and photos to the Virtual Museum of African Mammals, an animal-mapping database and website.
If the family aren’t walking in the mountains around the Panorama Route, they’re exploring the veld around their property and the town. “It is interesting to see how biodiversity has increased over the years,” Tamar says. “I think the macadamias have something to do with this. The spraying of the macs is a disaster for the bees – we’ve lost two hives – but not for the jackal, duiker and bush pigs. I think this has become an indigenous forest for them.”
They make a point of removing snares during their walks in the veld – Simon has taken out roughly 600 in the area. It is obvious that Mark and Tamar’s love of nature and sustainability has rubbed off on the kids from a young age.
“I think it is important to see it as a process,” Mark says, referring to their green journey. “You have to tackle one thing at a time.”