Unusual dreams and visions in which ancestors, strangers or animals from the spirit world appear with messages, prophecies or warnings, is one of the ways in which traditional healers and community leaders are called and fulfil their destiny in African society.
In 1952 the fourteen- year- old Noria Mabasa was sent from her home in Tsigalo in Venda to care for her niece in Johannesburg because her sister-in- law had become blind during childbirth.
It was here that she remembers the first dreams that would become such an influence on her life and art.
In it her father told her that when the stars came out that evening she was to bring water to his grave in Giyani.
She refused because he was dead, but the vision kept returning until she approached her brother who felt that the expense of sending her home to Venda at the behest of a dream was unwarranted.
Mabasa, three years later, married and went to live with her husband's family in Giyani.
There she began to regularly receive messages, prophecies and warnings through dreams. In one she received an accurate augury that the healthier of the twins of her neighbour would die, in another she was not only able to tell an acquaintance that a letter was being sent to her by a loved one, but also the colour paper it was written on.
She did not, then, regard these powers as talent - rather it was an immense burden on young wife with two small children and her mental and physical health began to suffer.
In fact, her disorder became so severe that her husband disowned her and sent her back to her family.

'When the sun rose she helped me undergo a healing ritual that made me feel better and the first thing that I did when I got home was to tell my children to go and fetch me some clay from the river.'
As she worked the clay into little dolls she began to feel a load being lifted from her shoulders and immediately began to regain her strength.
When she was happy with the first few she asked her daughter Joyce to take them to the roadside to sell to tourists, but Joyce refused - asking who on earth would buy what her mother had made. Mabasa then bribed her daughter with R1 to go and sell the dolls and she returned with R20 profit.
That day was the first time Mabasa was able to feed her family with money she had earned.
As she perfected the making of small dolls, so the leper returned in a dream to show her how to make and fire bigger and more intricate pieces.
Shortly after, the niece she cared for in Johannesburg came to visit and Mabasa gave her one of her work as a gift.
When the girl returned to the city she showed it to her father who was so impressed he took it into the Sowetan newspaper offices where he worked and they ran an article on the artist.
'Suddenly there was light in my life', smiled Mabasa as art dealers began to beat a path to her door, 'as I was able to fulfil my mission to get messages from the ancestors to my people.'
With the money that began to trickle in she invested in a property on the banks of the Levubu River where it flows through Vuwani and began to build a house.
Her home, consisting of traditional rondavels and a western-style house with metal frame windows that reflect the mix of customary and modern aspects in her work, is like no other in the community.
These structures all lead onto a central courtyard surrounded by a red stained wall that includes a built in throne in the centre.
Alongside it are young clay maidens depicting the respect the youth used to have for their bodies and the lack of morality in modern society.
Sacred crocodiles lie in the shade, a dog slinks over the wall and eyes on stalks keep watch. In the beautiful gardens are pot holders in the form of the lower half of the female torso, guard dogs, a woman suckling her child, sheep, a crocodile devouring a man and variety of complex, hypnotic figures that blend people, animals, mythology and the unconscious.
But clay is limited to the size of the available kiln- in Mabasa's case a hole in the ground.
One night in 1981 she dreamt of a tree being washed down the river.
When she woke she was confused as to why her spirit guide had directed her to clay, but was now suggesting wood.
Then she realised that wood would free her in terms of scale and she went to the river where she is convinced she saw a piece of driftwood caught under the bridge.
She called to a group of women washing clothes on the river bank to help her, but when they responded the wood was gone.
Undeterred, she returned home, called her daughter and found an axe.
When she got back to the bridge the driftwood she had imagined earlier was there and she cut a section from it and began sculpting it with the axe.
As dusk descended she dragged the piece home and left it in the courtyard to complete work she was doing in clay, but the wood kept calling out to her and she was forced to leave the pots and finish the sculpture.
This sculpture attracted the attention of fellow artist Nelson Mukhuba who contacted Ricky Burnett who was curating an exhibition. ' I want to go and show you Noria,' exclaimed an excited Mukhuba.
'That woman is carving! It is a first time a woman is carving here. I want to show everybody.'
Suddenly galleries, television and the press were all over her - often with disastrous consequences.
One leading Johannesburg art dealer took a truckload of her work and refused to pay her for what was sold or to return anything until she was forced to consult an attorney.
Even then only a fraction of the unsold sculptures found there way back to her. 'I decided to leave it,' shrugged Mabasa, as she ran her hand through the long dreadlocks that give her strength.
'It was consuming too much energy and I could always make other stuff. But it did teach me to be more careful.'
She needed all the strength and energy she could muster for another gift - a massive tree washed down the river during the flood that devastated Southern Africa in1999.
From that she cut five pieces, including one for a work in honour of the woman who gave birth in a tree in Mozambique, another of two men holding up a ceremonial drum and the biggest of them all - her rendition of the Union buildings that she considers her best piece ever, which she is currently completing in her garden.
This massive sculpture, of a woman chasing a man while others beat drums and jubilantly face the sky, celebrates the struggle of women for emancipation from oppression.
'It is now the time for women to be liberated,' she commented.
'It is silly that they have to still stand back for men, because everyone is equal.
No. That is wrong. Women are better than men.'

Article by Pat Hopkins
Tel: +27 11 679 4718
e-mail: hopkins@icon.co.za