Every person needs a purpose in order to get up.
And if you don't have a purpose to get up today, why do you bother to get up?
The day is loaned to you ...
Every Morning when I wake up in Porterville, I have a reason to stand up...
and my purpose is this passion, these horses that stand next to me. The horse that wants to take my hand without biting it..
So, every person, no matter where you live, if you don't have a purpose and a passion to motivate you to get up, why do you bother, why are you living?
So, that is my purpose in life. And if you have a talent....
and you hide it, you don't use it, then you are spoiling life, you are ruining your life.
If you drive into Porterville and ask who I am and you say Piet, no one will know, but if you say Piet Perd (Horse) they will know immediately.
When you hit those bluegums your heart just, you look down that road you see from one side
to the other and it just, it it's home, it takes you in those bluegums take you in and just
I feel like I've been encompassed in in this place. I'm Monique Nienaber and I'm in Porterville.
When I hitch up the horse cart or hitch up the horses in my open cart and I ride then I feel like the richest person in the world.
Porterville is a unique town, it's a beautiful region in which to live
it's a small, original Swartland town, the farming around us is mainly wheat, plenty of fruit farms, export grapes....
stone fruit on Piketberg up on the mountain, and a small amount of livestock, sheep and cattle.
A big chunk of wood really only starts revealing its secrets when one spends some
time with it you've got to spend time with it you've got to cut into it you've got to
give it a lot of respect and then all sorts of interesting
secrets start being revealed. One needs to to spend a bit of time in a small town .....
My name is Paul Kristafor we're in my woodturning studio in Porterville.
I knew immediately within 10 seconds of holding a chisel to a piece of spinning
wood that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life, it's an incredibly
meditative craft. This is a craft that that's been around for a long long time and is enjoying a bit
of a resurgence is being used to create more contemporary pieces of design. I've developed a
practice where I work entirely with greenwood as wet as possible as freshly felled as possible
for various reasons one of which is I can by managing the drying process create all sorts
of interesting forms that one one doesn't get with dried cured wood as as the the vessels dry
they twist and change their shape and settle in a form that the wood wants to
be in. So that's that's what I do, I work with green wet freshly felled wood, mostly oaks
um the various species of oak and I, and I create sculptural vessels and bowls
that that sell through through gallery spaces and high-end design consultants
I started pottery almost 40 years ago, I wanted to study art but my Father said I'm not a hippy so I couldn't, so I studied agriculture.
It didn't work, actually it did work out, but it was always art, art, art
and I started taking pottery lessons and just never stopped. My name is Alna Prodgers and I'm in Porterville.
To work with clay, I think....
you get rid of stress,
you make your own, personal piece before your eyes, and it can look beautiful to you, it can be beautiful to other people,
You forget what's going on around you,
and you just concentrate on the enjoyment of working with the clay, because at the end of the day it takes you back to your childhood.
We all played with clay when we were young.
What drew us to Porterville was I think the stillness the quietness, the
being out of the freneticness of the city. Being a nature person nature is right on on the doorstep
within five minutes you're out of town below the mountain, the stars the sunsets.
My name is Katja and I'm in Porterville. I'm a visual artist and I work in various mediums
ceramic and I work with fabric and also play around a bit with collage and painting.
I would have to say what inspires my art is the dream world it's
when I start, when I walk into my studio I don't ever really have a very clear
image of what I'm going to do I just pick up the material and I start to work and something emerges
something that I um, I might have had a glimmer of what it might be but it's what emerges is
never what what i imagined it's it's it feels like images from the unconscious from the dream world
and filter through into what I do.
Do you know what the most wonderful thing about the people of Porterville..
is the priceless puzzle they make up. Each one has their own specialty that fits in with the other
and in the end it makes up this beautiful, priceless art piece, like a mosaic or a puzzle.
My name is Christel Griffiths and I am in Porterville no 55 Du Toit Street at the Mosaic House.
I started with pottery, and then my husband said "No Christel rather do something for us"
and so I started with mosaics together with the pottery, and slowly it got out of hand and I was a slave to it, mosaic.
Every piece has a story, a social bond and freedom, freedom from emotional baggage that you carry with you, as it's almost like meditation.
People didn't initially see me, no one knew....
my first work, people just looked at it, but didn't say anything.
But when I did the second wall they started talking and noticed me,
The said that they didn't know that I could make something so beautiful.
And so people had trust in my work and helped, still today they help.
My name is Hester, I live in Porterville.
We tell the history of Porterville through doing mosaic pieces on walls.
On the walls there are about 300 to 400 pieces. I cut it very fine.
I take about three days to finish a wall.
Small towns have a sense of community and people wave at you, you know your neighbors I really
I love that sense of community. I think it's a great place to retire to but I think it's an even
better place to bring up kids, if i could have gone back and done this 20 years ago when my children
were younger I would have i would definitely have come and brought my children up here
Ugh it is.... in the month of February it is really hot
So if you come to Porterville in February, you'll run away immediately..
but if you have an aircon in your room, you'll sleep well every night.
and if this sun has has burnt down on you for a few summers, then you're not going anywhere, you'll just want to stay here.
I would say if you thinking of moving to a small town go for it, it's the best move
we've ever made, we're happier here our lives feel fuller and richer we enjoy the sense
of community the stillness and the evenings and the weekends I'd recommend it do it.
So when you come to Porterville you're not just coming to Porterville you're coming to a whole area the
Bergrivier is, or Porterville is part of the Bergrivier area which is made up of a whole lot of small
towns that all have the same sense of community inclusiveness and camaraderie so you start with us
in Porterville at 22 waterfalls and the Bergrivier leads you all the way down to Velddrif.