First of its kind art demonstration in Old Lyme Saturday

OLD LYME - David Black, a Stonington artist and Fulbright Scholar, will demonstrate a unique concept of collaborative painting developed in Tunisia to students of Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday.

This will be the first demonstration of this concept in the United States, organizers said.

The event will also be attended by three international dignitaries: Mustapha Tlili, who is director of Center for Dialogues, Islamic World: U.S. - the West; Ira Goldberg, director of the Art Students League, both in NYC, and Francis Dubois who served at the United Nations for 31 years. Dubois left the UN to promote art as a way of building bridges between cultures and is organizing exhibitions in various countries, including the United States, organizers said in a statement.

Black has participated in the U.S. Department of State’s ART in Embassies Program since 1997, the statement said. Four of his paintings were selected for the ambassador’s residence by the United States Ambassador to Tunisia, Robert Godec, in 2007, it said. In 2008, Black was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to conduct workshops with Tunisian artists.

In the collaborative approach that was developed by Hechmi Ghachem, leader of a group of artists at the Bouabana Art Space in Tunis, anyone in a group can paint at any time, and anyone can paint over another artist’s work. Disagreements are settled by one artist who is designated the leader for each painting. One artist is chosen to begin the painting and to say when it is finished.

The Tunisian Collaborative Painting Concept will be brought from Africa to America by David Black on Saturday, February 20th. Black will instruct and supervise three groups of students at Lyme Academy College on how to create group paintings using the Tunisian rules.

In November of this year six Tunisian artists will join David Black for two weeks in New York under the sponsorship of New York University’s Center for Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West. The seven artists will demonstrate the Tunisian collaborative painting concept at the Art Students League. Students from several New York-based art schools will attend the demonstration and have the opportunity to collaborate on paintings, the statement said.