Carol Soucek King Presents
The 2027 Lyceums at Arroyo del Rey
Educational, philosophical, and creative forums
In person at a Buff & Hensman landmark
INTRODUCING
THE 2027 LYCEUMS
This year, the Arroyo del Rey Foundation opens its doors. The 2027 Lyceums are a brand-new series of in-person gatherings — educational, philosophical, and creative forums held at Arroyo del Rey. Most take place in the gardens and grounds; others, within the house itself. It is the 1979 Buff & Hensman residence, a designated Historic Monument of the City of Pasadena. Each gathering is intimate by design.
How this is different from the Salon
You already know The Salon on the Spiritually Creative Life — now in its 31st year, free and online each month. The Lyceums are its in-person counterpart: the same spirit, a different experience. The Salon brings the conversation to you, wherever you are — and it continues, free and monthly, exactly as always. The Lyceums bring you here — to the gardens, the light, and the landscape that Buff & Hensman built, for an afternoon you can only have at Arroyo del Rey.
Each Lyceum is presented by Carol Soucek King for the Arroyo del Rey Foundation, in her home — part of the Foundation’s mission to preserve this residence and keep alive the vision of a spiritually creative life.
Every program carries a suggested donation of $200 to the Arroyo del Rey Foundation.
- The Colloquium — a single afternoon, with no seating limit.
- The four-part series — each meets four times across 2027 and is limited to twelve seats; the $200 covers all four meetings for each program.
The first Annual Buff & Hensman
Commemorative Colloquium
Moderated by Mae Brunken • In conversation with (clockwise from upper left) Kenneth A. Breisch, PhD, Russell Brown, Kelly Sutherlin McLeod, FAIA. and Heather Goers. At center, the architects of Arroyo del Rey (left to right): Conrad Buff III, FAIA, and Donald C. Hensman, FAIA.
Championing Historic
Architecture
Sunday, March 7, 2027 at 10:30 am - 1:00 pm PST
Join the Colloquium
The afternoon is led by interior designer Mae Brunken, founder of Mae Brunken Design and a longtime champion of historic buildings. A member of Saving Iconic Architecture and steward of her own 1927 Spanish home, she brings a storyteller’s eye — honed during years as a film and television set decorator — to the architecture and the stories it holds.
This is the first Colloquium of its kind: a single afternoon, inside the Buff & Hensman home itself, where four of Southern California’s most respected preservation voices gather for a conversation you can have nowhere else. Sit in the very rooms under discussion and hear — from the historians, architects, and advocates who know this work best — why Buff & Hensman shaped the way the region lives, and why their legacy endures. If you care about Southern California architecture, this is the afternoon not to miss.
Joining Mae: Kenneth A. Breisch, Ph.D. — Architectural historian and Associate Professor Emeritus of Architecture at USC; founder of USC’s Graduate Program in Heritage Conservation. Russell Brown — Founder and Board Chair, Friends of Residential Treasures: LA (FORT: LA); award-winning writer, director, and producer. Heather Goers — Historic Preservation and Heritage Consulting. Kelly Sutherlin McLeod, FAIA — Kelly Sutherlin McLeod Architecture, Inc.
Details: Sunday, March 7, 2027 · Suggested donation $200 to the Foundation · No seating limit
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Nan Rae
Meditations
Nan Rae — artist, author, teacher, and philanthropist
Uplifting Conversations and Spiritual Practice
Four Saturdays beginning
January 16, 2027 at 1:00pm - 3:00pm PST
Join Meditations with Nan Rae
An artist whose work speaks as much to the spirit as to the eye, Nan Rae has spent a lifetime helping others find beauty, stillness, and their own creative voice. A painter, author, and teacher in the Asian brush tradition — author of The Ch’i of the Brush and four inspirational books — she has guided more than 4,000 students, including over twenty-five years at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. Her art has been chosen by the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony, and she lives by a simple motto: “Live joyfully.”
Meditations brings that spirit to Arroyo del Rey. Over four Saturday mornings across 2027, Nan leads an intimate circle — no more than twelve — in uplifting conversation and spiritual practice, held in the gardens of a Buff & Hensman landmark. It is a rare chance to step out of the noise, quiet the mind, and reconnect with your own creativity in the company of one of the region’s most beloved teachers.
Come for a single morning or return for all four; each one leaves you a little more awake to the creative life.
Details: Four Saturdays: January 16, April 17, July 17, October 16 · Suggested donation $200 to the Foundation (covers all four meetings) · Limited to 12 seats
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Miller Yee Fong
Sketchbook
Miller Yee Fong — architect and designer
The Art of Seeing to Draw
Four Saturdays beginning
January 30, 2027 at 10:00am - 1:00pm PST
Join Sketchbook
For Miller Yee Fong, a pencil and a blank page are where design truly begins — a conviction carried from decades at the drafting table. A 1964 graduate of the USC School of Architecture, Miller designed mid-century homes and, alongside his father at the family’s Fong Brothers Company, redefined mid-century casual luxury; in his twenties he created the iconic Lotus Chair, now in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with other work held by the Museum of Modern Art. For twenty-two years he taught architectural rendering at USC — the craft of thinking with a pencil that he now brings to Sketchbook.
Sketchbook is Miller’s answer to a craft in danger of being lost. As students increasingly let computers and AI do the drawing, he returns to the fundamental act — hand, pencil, paper — that trains the eye and frees the imagination. Over four Saturdays at Arroyo del Rey, in an intimate group of no more than twelve, Miller shares the rendering techniques he honed across a celebrated career in architecture and design, with Patricia Ferber facilitating. No experience required — only the willingness to pick up a pencil and see your world differently. (When Miller is unavailable on a given date, Patricia arranges another master to lead.)
Facilitating alongside Miller is Patricia Ferber — sculptor, curator, and educator. Working across many media, she creates sculptures, paintings, and large-scale architectural landscape walls in rock and metal, with a ceramics practice spanning more than fifty years (“clay continues to captivate me,” she says, “serving as an extension of my imago mundi”). As facilitator, Patricia keeps each session on course and, whenever Miller is unavailable on a given date, arranges another master to lead — so every Saturday delivers expert, hands-on guidance.
Details: Four Saturdays: January 30, April 24, July 31, October 30 · Suggested donation $200 to the Foundation (covers all four meetings) · Limited to 12 seats
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Jack Paduntin
International Renaissance
Doing What Is Right: Ethics, Responsibility,
and Human Dignity at Work
Dr. Jack Paduntin - educator and president of California Institute of Advanced Management
Conversations on Harmony — International, Intercultural, Interpersonal, and Interspecies
Four Sundays beginning
January 31, 2027 at 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm PST
International Renaissance
Dr. Jack Paduntin has spent his career in education convinced that leadership is, at heart, a moral practice — one that serves people before profit. He is President of the California Institute of Advanced Management (CIAM) in Alhambra and formerly President of Pacific Oaks College. Guided by Peter Drucker’s philosophy, he develops ethical, purposeful, and socially responsible leaders who build trust and serve the common good. Drawing on his own experience as an immigrant and educator, he champions cultural sensitivity, dialogue across communities, and leadership approached with empathy and curiosity.
International Renaissance asks what it means to lead — and live — well. Over four Sundays at Arroyo del Rey, in an intimate circle of no more than twelve, Dr. Paduntin opens a conversation on doing what is right: ethics, responsibility, and human dignity at work, and harmony across every boundary — international, intercultural, interpersonal, and even interspecies. Drawing on Peter Drucker’s conviction that a society thrives only when it develops its people, these are working conversations, not abstract lectures — about trust, judgment, and a life of contribution. Come to think harder about the kind of leader, and the kind of person, you want to be.
Details: Four Sundays beginning January 31, March 28, June 27, September 26 · Suggested donation $200 to the Foundation (covers all four meetings) · Limited to 12 seats
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Gregory Joseph Firlotte
Poetry in the Garden
Gregory Joseph Firlotte — writer and award-winning poet
An Afternoon of Verse
at Arroyo del Rey
Four Saturdays beginning
February 20, 2027 at 11:00 am - 1:00 pm PST
Join Poetry in the Garden
Gregory Joseph Firlotte finds poetry everywhere — in a photograph, a memory, a moment in the garden — and believes anyone can find the words for it. A longtime member of the New England Poetry Club (co-founded by Robert Frost in 1915), he is the author of the collections In This New England and Gilded Summer, and a first-prize winner of the Peterborough Poetry Project. His poems appear in three PoetrySoup.com anthologies, and in 2025 he published From WeHo with Love, a coffee-table history drawn from six years documenting a century of West Hollywood — work that extends to the documentary Studio One Forever, in which he reflects on the architectural heritage of the storied venue.
Poetry in the Garden is exactly that: an afternoon of language and landscape, where verse is read aloud among the plantings and pathways of a Buff & Hensman home. Over four Saturdays, Gregory gathers an intimate circle of no more than twelve to read, listen, and write — to let the garden do what it has always done for poets: slow the eye, open the ear, and find the words. Bring your own work or simply come to listen; either way, you’ll leave seeing the ordinary world a little more closely.
Details: Four Saturdays: February 20, May 15, August 14, November 13 · Suggested donation $200 to the Foundation (covers all four meetings) · Limited to 12 seats
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Nastasja Dorandi
A Symposium: Plato's
First Alcibiades
“Know Thyself” — the Sphinx and her riddle, from the Prometheus Trust edition of Plato’s First Alcibiades, the dialogue at the heart of this Symposium.
Know Thyself:
An Inquiry into the Nature
of the Self
Four Saturdays beginning
February 27, 2027 at 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm PST
Join the Symposium
For Nastasja Dorandi, philosophy is not a subject to be taught but a path to be walked — and she walks it through the original dialogues themselves. From an early age she has pursued truth and wisdom through primary sources, exploring across many traditions without any ready-made formula. She studied extensively with the late Pierre Grimes, Ph.D., of the Noetic Society, and continues her self-directed study with the Prometheus Trust in the UK. True to her conviction that the only true teacher is one’s own higher self, she accepts no honorarium — asking only that participants read the dialogue in advance so the conversation can go deep.
A Symposium takes up Plato’s First Alcibiades, regarded in late antiquity as the doorway to all his dialogues because it asks the oldest and most personal question there is: what is the self? Over four Saturdays at Arroyo del Rey, in an intimate circle of no more than twelve, Nastasja facilitates not a lecture but a shared practice — the “divine play of dialectic,” holding questions, working through puzzles, and following the argument toward self-knowledge. Only by knowing ourselves, the dialogue holds, can we understand how we perceive reality and find what truly fulfills us. Come prepared to read, to wonder, and to think alongside others in the soul’s ascent toward excellence.
Details: Four Saturdays: February 27, May 29, August 28, December 4 · Suggested donation $200 to the Foundation (covers all four meetings) · Limited to 12 seats · Please read the dialogue in advance
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