Minot artist creates stained glass window

Askvig’s interest in stained glass art led to an opportunity to create a piece dedicated this past August at the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch chapel in Bismarck.

“I just loved stained glass,” said Askvig, who also loves to travel with her husband, Brent. “My idea of a great vacation is going and seeing all the churches and stained glass. One year, we happened to be in Paris for my birthday and Brent said, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to see all the churches in Paris.’ So we spent a whole day walking around looking at the stained glass windows.”

When first asked by the Ranch to create a stained glass window for its chapel, Askvig felt inadequate and declined. When asked again, she agreed to volunteer her time if Margie Bolton from Margie’s Art Glass Studio in Minot would be her mentor. Bolton provided advice and answered Askvig’s questions during the art process.

Produced in panels that later were joined, the chapel window is 17 feet tall and 5 feet wide.

Submitted Photo
Stacy Askvig stands next to the stained glass window she created for the Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch chapel in Bismarck.

Working with glass is a delicate job – one that is not easy when dealing with large pieces.

“If you broke too many pieces, you don’t have any glass left. And this one piece, I broke three times,” Askvig said, recalling the stress. “I think it was four days before I went back to work on it again.”

Another of the project challenges was choosing the glass colors because many places that make the glass were shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think it took us three to four months just to pick out the glass, because you couldn’t get in the ones you wanted,” she said.

The window uses a gold colored glass at the top to represent God, a cross to represent Christ and a dove to represent the Holy Spirit. The dove stands a few inches in front of the window, attached as a separate piece. The dove’s design is similar to a window Askvig had seen in another church. The design also includes the Greek Alpha and Omega letters, as requested by the Ranch.

Askvig said she didn’t realize the beauty of it until the window was fitted in place.

“When you work on it, it’s flat and you don’t see the light through it. So, it was so wonderful to see the light through it. I was just so surprised how nice it looks,” she said.

Askvig said she also plans to make a stained glass window for the new Zurcher Cottage at the Ranch at Minot. She hopes to incorporate pieces of an old church window provided by the Ranch. A second, larger dove made as an option for the stained glass window also will have a home in the chapel on the Minot Ranch campus.

Askvig has a workspace dedicated to her stained glass and now works largely in fused stained glass art. However, her creation of a window for the chapel in Bismarck was a type of stained glass art known as came work, referring to the connecting strips around the different colors of glass.

Around her own Minot home, Askvig displays some of her stained glass handiwork as well as furnishings from her previous interest in woodworking – a hobby she has turned over to her husband. At this time of year, though, the decor is nativities. She has a collection of more than 600 nativities, many collected during her travels.

Among her many interests, she loves gardening, too.

Askvig grew up in Minot, where her father Ben Hoag was superintendent at North Central Research Extension Center. She graduated from Minot State University with a degree in medical technology and completed her master’s degree at the University in North Dakota in 1993.

She worked at Medical Arts in Minot and for a group of gynecology and family practice doctors before she and her husband, Brent, moved to Bismarck and later to Idaho, where they lived for three years. In Idaho, she worked in clinics and did consulting work in setting up laboratories.

They moved back to Minot, where Brent Askvig was director for the MSU Center for Persons with Disabilities and Stacy Askvig spent 30 years with the UND Center for Family Medicine as laboratory scientist and later as lab director until retiring about five years ago.

One of her current roles is as volunteer assistant coach for the MSU women’s wrestling team.

“When I was in high school at Bishop Ryan, it was the only sport we won in, and I just loved watching it. And then both my sons wrestled,” she said. “One son ended up playing basketball, and my other son ended up wrestling, but for a couple years they did both basketball and wrestling.”

Askvig, who joined the Minot Rotary Club nearly 30 years ago and is a past president, had approached the MSU women’s wrestling coach who was at one of the club meetings to volunteer her help with the team.

“I am an assistant coach, because that way I can be on the sidelines, but I really act more as their social planner,” she said, laughingly adding, “I call myself their grandma.”

She tries to attend a practice a week, attends home meets and travels regularly with the team.

She plans the team’s season welcome event, Christmas party and other fun social activities. Now in her third year with the team, she invited area schools with girls’ wrestling to a home meet, and two schools sent their athletes.

“We had a reception for them afterwards at the college,” she said. “We also invited their families if they were there.”

The MSU team members have been recipients of Askvig’s baking and art hobbies. Askvig also started a scholarship that will benefit future female wrestlers.

Additionally, Askvig recently joined the board of Dakota Family Services, a psychology, psychiatry and therapy clinic that serves the general public and supports Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, which hosts its office.

As a board member, she replaces her husband, who had served on the board for 10 years. Askvig said her personal experiences with the field of mental health give her a perspective that she wants to bring to the clinic’s advisory board.

She noted her involvement in Rotary also was because of the health-related work the organization does globally, from providing safe water to funding medical needs, as well as its promotion of peace around the world.

Askvig, who enjoys traveling globally, said she appreciates learning about other cultures. The Askvigs have traveled to Norway enough times to have formed friendships, hosting those friends in their home, too.

“I just think it’s good to understand other people,” Askvig said. “I’m a person who will listen. I’m a person who wants to try to understand somebody else’s viewpoint.”