Enjoy an Early Christmas in a Fancy House

○“Bottom-up House” and “Lying House”

Art center Mano in Bokpyeong-ri, Bogae-myeon, Anseong-si, Gyeonggi province is a very interesting place. It is a place where visitors, with the help of young artists, can enjoy various cultural experiences, including glass crafting, metal crafting, painting classes and theme exhibitions. Anyone can make an art piece for himself with the help of artists. You forget about the real world when you are hammering in a studio like a blacksmith’s shop and making accessories by melting glass.

A cozy place surrounded by low hills, this place gives an extraordinary impression at a first look.

The most special thing about Mano is the “bottom-up house,” an art shop and gallery, and the “lying house,” an Italian restaurant. The bottom-up house features a pointed triangular roof rooted on the ground and flat floor facing to the sky. Next to it, the lying house shows horizontally extended windows, roof and floor, looking like a sleeping house. The extraordinary shape of the houses makes people look at the world bottom-up or lying down, moving their heads.

The grass hill in front of the two houses is an outdoor sculpture park. Creative artworks placed here and there on the hill entertain visitors just as much as the two houses do. If you are fortunate enough to visit there when snow covers the ground, you would be able to make artwork using your footsteps, listening the pleasant sound that your footsteps make.

○Making Christmas Decorations

Christmas is all over here these days. You can make various Christmas decorations for yourself here, surrounded by Christmas trees and listening to Christmas carols.

The most popular decoration item is a Santa doll made out of light clay. As light clay is light, tender, not sticky, and harmless to your body, it is a great material for you to use when making toys with your children. In addition, making toys out of light clay is quite simple, therefore you would finish making a doll in about 20 minutes.

You need five clay lumps, each the size of a baby’s fist. The basic collars are red, yellow, blue, black and white, and you can also mix those collars to make a new collar you want. First, you need to mix yellow, blue and white clay and rub and press the lump with your fingers until the collar turns into light orange. Then, you can make Santa’s face with it. The collar of the face varies depending on the mixture, ranging from a yellowish to reddish face.

The most important thing when you try to make a typical Santa’s shape is to make his body chubby. But, as it turns out, there comes a wide range of Santa shapes, from fat Santa to slim Santa to baby Santa to bearded Santa, and so on. The decorations that you can make are not confined to Santa. You can also make various other items, like tree ornaments, gift boxes, canes and stars.

○Christmas Concert on Christmas

You can also take pictures and make a crystal photo printing as a souvenir. It is a good idea to make a special necklace, key holder or cell phone holder, printing photos of you and your friends onto a transparent crystal.

You can get crystal photo printing for free if you buy a couples package (for one night) within this year. The package includes a dinner at a very romantic Italian restaurant, a sleep night at a European-style bungalow, a breakfast, and a glass craft class entitled “making heart” (130,000-190,000 won).

In addition to that, there will be a Christmas concert on Christmas Eve and Christmas day featuring vocal, piano and string music. The restaurant will give Chilean wine for free to customers visiting the restaurant wearing red clothes or accessories. Call 031-676-7815 for more information.

Choi Mi-sun, travel planner, tigerlion007@hanmail.net

Photos: Shin Seok-gyo, freelance photographer