There exist cramped galleries that would envy the spacious, highceilinged museum potential of
Rambam’s Sammy Ofer Tower lobby, through which 15,000 individuals pass daily. In March 2008, this space realized its potential when thirteen recent, mixed-media works by Haifa sculptress Kati Paldi were exhibited. The works were united by the use of lightweight, mostly found, materials (e.g., buttons, feathers, newspaper, film negatives, fabric) and visual and verbal punning.

Kati Paldi is celebrated nationally and internationally for marble, wood, terra-cotta and cast-bronze sculptures.  She is the wife of emeritus Chief of Gynecology Prof. Eytan Paldi; the couple immigrated to Israel from Hungary in 1948, and in the early years, while raising the couple’s two children, she worked as his medical secretary.

When first she began to sculpt in wood, the artist translated the hundreds of pregnant women that
she had observed into corpulent, introverted figures, of which several are on permanent display in the lobby.  She says, “I like the round shape, the quiet, the harmony.”

Because use of a compressor, hammer and chisel, and electric tools has recently become physically taxing for her, the sculptress turned to iron mesh and polystyrene for this show, all of whose works she created within a prolific 12-month period in 2007-2008.

“The idea was that I could lift the work,” she says frankly.