THE LIST

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BEIND THE SCENES

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Sara Villiers at the Italian Centre, where commercial artist Jim Calder turns pristine pillars Sistine.

‘Frankly, this cosmopolitan claptrap rings rather hollow when we don’t even have an Italian Centre!’ I

bitterly remarked to an unemployed friend from Easterhouse, busy shooting up at the time. ‘Mamma mia!’ he cried in exasperation as he lobbed a brick through a kirk window, ‘let me show you the Cafe Qui which is a formalist edifice of just such design.’ Having casually extracted the finances for said venture from a passing pensioner, Sebastian (as his parents, in a fit of

cultural hysteria, recently rechristened him) sped us towards the Merchant City in a hijacked Black Maria.

Suitably enlightened, I enter the chic cafe and descend to the bar in its bowels, where the madcap world of Jim Calder awaits me. Amidst the atmospheric lighting a [a glowworm, jazzy-blues a [a Volkswagen ad, and chisel-cheeked waiters a la Once

DAVID HARROLD

Upon a Time in America, Jim Calder, a commercial artist from Fife, recreates scenes of the land that brought you Tuscany perfume. Black Box and Mussolini on the walls of a converted Glaswegian warehouse.

In the noble tradition ofAlexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, Jim has not, technically speaking, actually visited

the country of his inspiration. But his D

The List 12 25 January 1990 67