UPFRONT Small Towns RURAL DELIGHT
Beautiful mountains surround Porterville, but there's little else there besides a picture-postcard white church, a couple of decent restaurants, showgrounds that host a monthly farmers' market, farm machinery and grazing livestock. Sometimes, people make a place, as I find when visiting its artists, each from very different backgrounds and with a unique artistic style, but all with similar reasons for moving to this town at the foot of the Olifants River Mountains.
My first stop is portrait ardst and ceramicist Andre du Toil, who used to work in the clothing industry.