Photo by Bill Pritchard From the first step of drawing a design on paper to the final step of polishing the stained glass creation, it all comes together in Louis DiCarlo's basement workshop. Purchase this photo

We knew all about the popular Deep Creek Lake area for summer fun, the Wisp Ski Resort and the groomed cross-country ski trails of New Germany State Park for winter recreation. This time, we wanted to also soak up a little art-style culture. We got our fill.

The base for our quest was a log cabin at New Germany State Park where we roughed it with indoor plumbing and a fireplace, or more accurately, a wood-burning stove insert in a huge stone fireplace. It was just cool enough in the evenings so that the crackling fire set the mood for what any other close-knit couple would consider -- and we're all adults here -- a game of Scrabble. The loser had to make breakfast.

We broke away from our Scrabble, long walks on the cool and shady trails at the park and enjoying the unaccustomed quiet to head for Mountain Lake Park. This small town near Oakland, founded in the late 1800s as a Methodist education and recreation center, was the home of our first arts encounter. We encountered more than we expected.

Stained Glass Gallery

The two-story Victorian-style house at the corner of State Route 135 and I Street is light blue with neatly painted purple trim. The owner of the house and of Stained Glass Gallery is Louis DiCarlo, a white-haired, 75-year-old bear of a master craftsman and jokester. It took him a while to get rolling because we woke him from a nap when we rang his doorbell, but it was nonstop after that.

He's not the "If you need any help, call me" type. He wants to show you and help you appreciate his thousands of beautifully crafted lamp shades, sun catchers, custom window and door panels, figurines and small boxes.

"I like to talk," he said of his approach to customer relations. "I have a ball with them."

"Here's one I made for your husband before you met him," he said to my wife, Shirley, pointing out the bright lemons on the lampshade. Or consider his group technique when he invites everyone to feel the texture in the glass, then tells them that's how he gets the dust off his pieces.

He might have lost one customer when he told her Red Hat Society touring group that she posed for his semi-nude, stained glass panel of a young Red Hat lady. It didn't ease her embarrassment when he told her friends she had to come back a second time for more accurate measurements.

Like a lot of his visitors, we were more lookers than buyers, trying to take it all in, but that doesn't bother DiCarlo.

"Sometimes they don't buy the first time," he said. "But they tell their friends," and the sales do come. The feedback from his sales might come in the form of, "I really like it. Everybody likes it. My family likes it," DiCarlo said. His standard response to that line of praise is, "I'm just going to have to charge you $50 more." Sun catchers are priced from $8 to $20 depending on the size, window panels from $65 to $550 and lamps from $125 to $650.

The most striking pieces illustrate his specialty of mastering the small details, making his Frank Lloyd Wright and Tiffany style lamp shades remarkably beautiful. In his basement workshop, DiCarlo starts with 1Ú8 inch thick glass in 30-inch by 48-inch sheets he gets from a supplier in Chicago. He makes a paper pattern -- some from his 300 designbooks -- numbers the pieces, cuts the glass with a small carbide wheel glass cutter, snaps off the scored pieces with smooth jaw pliers, grinds down the sharp edges, and applies copper foil to the joint where he will apply the solder.

He places the piece in a metal frame and reinforces the edges with more solder. The finishing steps involve washing the piece with soap and water, polishing, applying a patina to darken the solder joints and finally, hand buffing with a soft cloth. It's not a new technique, DiCarlo said. It's how Louis Tiffany made his pieces.

DiCarlo is originally from Baltimore, where he was inspired by the stained glass windows in churches when he did wedding photography. When he was learning his craft 49 years ago he took all the classes he could find and traveled around the country attending classes and demonstrations by visiting stained glass craftsmen from all over the world. After several visits, he moved to Mountain Lake Park in 1989.

While he tries to spend six or seven hours a day in his workshop, more in the winter months, DiCarlo still finds time to contribute to his community. He's a member of the Rotary and other service organizations, including House of Hope, which helps feed the needy and the Dove Center, a shelter for abused women. He also donates some of his work. One piece, a window panel depicting a steam locomotive coming out of a tunnel, was donated to the renovated train station in Oakland.

DiCarlo's stained glass pieces have found homes in every state and in many countries, and he enjoys carrying on the tradition by giving lessons in his home. "I just enjoy it," he said, and if it doesn't sell right away, he's OK with that too. He wants you to understand he's not being sacrilegious when he explains how he feels about his creative process. "It's almost like being God," he said. "I create birds, animals, flowers. I just feel lucky that I can do that."

We had to skip the middle part of our planned tour -- the Simon Pearce glass blowing factory in Mountain Lake Park -- because of a time problem. We'll hit it next time because from all we heard about the operation, including the catwalk view of the factory, it's definitely worth a stop. Simon Pearce produces high quality hand-blown glass and pottery at the Mountain Lake Park and Windsor, Vt., factories, and has 10 retail stores in eight states, including the one in Mountain Lake Park.

Snowbird Creations Glass Studio

The next stop on our art glass tour was the Snowbird Creations Glass Studio of Julie Turrentine, a musician and artist. She lives with her husband and two dogs in one of those House and Garden magazine settings in Swanton, at the south end of Deep Creek Lake, that must get your wife to thinking, "Holy cow, if only he had a decent job, we could live out here, too."

A friendly and gracious Turrentine showed us her well-lighted, in-home display room and large work area where she creates her unique fused glass pieces. That's fused as in firing different combinations of clear, solid color and coated glass at different temperatures and times in a computer-controlled kiln to make decorative and functional pieces.

"You just have to try stuff and use your imagination, she said of her approach to making her one-of-a-kind art glass. "I find the things that come out of my head are best. It's all about color and design." Turrentine is also big on discipline and organization. "I write down everything," she said, so there's a record of what works and what doesn't. "There's something about being a musician that transfers to this."

Her musical background includes being trained as a classical pianist, teaching college music classes and touring with the Air Force's Singing Sergeants for 20 years. Now she is the artistic director of the Garrett Choral Society. After she retired from the Air Force, Turrentine, 59, and her husband Moe, also a musician, moved in 2002 to Swanton, about an hour from her hometown of Uniontown, Pa. She started her glass fusing a year later.

Turrrentine's interest in fused glass was sparked by her purchase of a glass pendant in a gift shop and subsequent visits to galleries and studios. After one week's training at a studio in Beltsville, she struck out on her own, researching techniques and reading all she could on her new passion. Her husband helped buy the start-up equipment, which has expanded to include a band saw, vertical wet belt sander, beveler-polisher, two kilns and a sandblasting machine.

She explains the process, in part, on her website: "É to fuse different glasses together, they must heat and cool at the same rate. The glass must be compatible during the cooling process or the piece will shatter. Two to four layers of glass are stacked over a clear base, melted at 1,475 degrees and cooled very slowly. The fused slab is placed over a mold for shaping and fired again at 1,275 degrees. A piece can take several firings depending on the texture desired."

The result of all this labor-intensive work is impressive, as is the range of styles. A departure from the crystalline, carefully formed sculptures is her latest technique, "pate de verre," or paste of glass. Colored glass granules called "frits" are arranged to form a glass painting after it's fired, producing a glowing, translucent work of art.

Turrentine also creates smaller pieces -- pendants, earrings, necklaces, bracelets and other jewelry that are more easily transported to shows. "I'm having a ball with it," she said. "I keep coming up with new things. When they try on that necklace and light up. That's fun." The price range of the jewelry is from $15 for earrings to $250 for jumbo glass bracelets and beaded pendants. The art glass ranges from $15 for soap dishes to $1,000 sculptures.

She said she's always on the lookout for exotic beads when she travels, likes to photograph birds that she can capture in glass, and is "constantly looking at nature for inspiration." One of her sources of inspiration was seeing the monarch butterfly migration to Mexico. It took most of one winter to create 72 monarch butterflies in glass, "every spot on their wings a tiny chip of glass" and she donated the finished piece, "Best be the Butterflies," to the Discovery Center at Deep Creek Lake State Park.

Turrentine continues to experiment and grow in her art. "I'm driven," she said. "I like to say, 'this is what I did with my day.'

A great opportunity to see all three art glass styles -- Simon Pearce's glass blowing, Louis DiCarlo's stained glass and Julie Turrentine's fused glass -- is the "Glass, Glorious Glass" self-guided studio tour the first weekend in August.

A sampling

While you're in the area, here's a sampling -- strictly subjective -- of some other things to see and do:

Shop at the Springs Store, just over the state line north of Grantsville, where you can get just-out-of-the-oven cinnamon rolls. The store serves the Amish and Mennonite community and there's even an Amish buggy parking lot in a shady spot across the road.

Wander through the 18th-century-style Spruce Forest Artisan Village, an arts and heritage center near Grantsville, where on the day we visited master woodcarver Gary Yoder and colored pencil artist Lenore Long Lancaster were just two of the artists demonstrating their craft.

Eat at the Penn Alps restaurant, located across the parking lot from the Artisan Village, where they feature homemade food and you might get lucky and be served by 28-year-veteran waitress Edith Yoder. Check out the gift shop featuring locally made items.

Take your camera and hiking boots to Swallow Falls State Park -- a small park with the big waterfalls and a stand of 300-year-old hemlock and white pine trees.

There's a lot to see and do in this scenic, friendly and lightly-traveled part of our state. Any time of year would be a fun time to visit. Take your time and your Scrabble board.