Jeroen Stok’s stainless steel sculptures of tulips, birds, and abstract objects are on display at dozens of public places as well as private collections in the Netherlands. Throughout his career, he has explored different techniques and materials and their interaction with light. “I always try to find the edge and go to the limit of what’s possible for that material,” he said.

Jeroen attended the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, but when he learned the Transcendental Meditation^® technique at 19 the course of his life changed. He soon learned the TM-Sidhi^® program and applied to MIU. He studied art during the 1983-84 academic year and, in his spare time, he began making light fixtures out of recycled objects which led to his first installation at the MIU student gallery.

After returning home, he continued to make sculptures using paper and bamboo combined with a light source; however, the fragility of the materials presented too many limitations. That’s when he turned to steel. His father owned a steel factory and he was already familiar with the material. Soon commissions for large outdoor sculptures started coming in from municipal governments and businesses.

Since 1989 Jeroen has lived in a small community of Transcendental Meditation practitioners in the town of Lelystad, where he attends group practice of the TM-Sidhi program daily. In describing the influence of his long-time TM^® practice on his art, he said the following.

“I am drawn to the light, the positive, the finer levels of things, the details. One of the themes in my work is flowers, especially the blossoming of a flower from a bud. That moment of transformation symbolizes your own self being expressed into the world.”

In recent years, Jeroen’s art work has included designing steel and glass monuments and memorials. “I enjoy the contact with people, he said. “It’s emotional and rewarding to work for people who lost their loved ones. While I am serving other people, I am also enriching myself instead of doing art for my ego.”

MUM alumna and faculty member Nynke Passi recently published a poem in issue 30:3 of CALYX, a prestigious magazine featuring literature and art by women. Her writing has been published in literary magazines such as Gulf Coast, Red River Review, and The Anthology of New England Writers. Her poems have also appeared in national anthologies including River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the Twenty-First Century, Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace, and the just published Allegro & Adagio: Dance Poems.

Growing up in the Netherlands, Mrs. Passi was an imaginative child and enjoyed writing magical tales and poems. At age seven, she told her mother that she wanted to be a writer.

Mrs. Passi has practiced the Transcendental Meditation^®technique since age 12, and came to MIU at her mother’s suggestion. She graduated with a BA in literature and a minor in theater in 1986. Her MIU professor Mark Spragg encouraged her to keep studying writing, so she earned an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in 1992.

While working for the New England Writers’ Association, Mrs. Passi was continually exposed to the work of accomplished poets, and her own poetry began to flourish. In 1998 she came to MUM to teach creative writing. Over the past 20 years she has developed and taught a variety of courses, including creative process, graphic narrative, poetry, poetry and transcendence, memoir writing, personal essay, fiction, and travel writing.

Mrs. Passi is director of MUM’s undergraduate Creative Writing Program and is currently developing an MFA in Creative Writing, which will be a sister program to the low residency David Lynch MFA in Screenwriting directed by Dorothy Rompalske. Mrs. Passi is also recipient of the MUM alumni award and three student appreciation awards.

Mrs. Passi often draws inspiration from her personal and spiritual experiences, family, and nature. “All these years of practicing TM definitely had a big impact on my writing,” she said. “There is always something in me that is fascinated with the transcendent, something silent or empty at the heart of things, and all my poems dance around that.”

She is currently completing her first book of poetry, as well as a chapbook of a personal essay that was a finalist in the 2014 Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize of The Missouri Review. Her tale is based on a true story of her father’s best friend, a Frisian farmer who developed a friendship with a wild swan that followed him around after the death of his daughter.