Patti Ambrogi attended the Visual Studies Workshop as a graduate student from 1972 to 1976 after graduating from Albany State University with her BA. From her earlier work to her most recent, Ambrogi has dealt with concepts of female identity, social conception, public prerogative, movement and censorship. Ambrogi has likened the message of her work to “confronting and altering conventions.” Her sources of inspiration have stemmed from the print and broadcast media and, simply put, the world that has surrounded her.

In the early 1970s, while working for the Saratoga Performing Arts Center as a ticket taker and promotional photographer, Ambrogi created a series of photographs from a dance that she and several performers choreographed. The choreography and capture of these images was designed to tell the tale of movement, not by displaying a key moment, but to capture a moment that illustrated the context of a longer stretch of time in the dance. Faces obscured by shadow and contorted forms ultimately create a space where the conversation becomes about the movement of the human form, not the pose of a nude.

In 1989 Ambrogi was confronted with four anonymous complaints of alleged child abuse and pornography revolving around her photographs depicting her twin daughters naked while playing in the family’s garden. These accusations were ultimately found to be baseless and the District Attorney’s office found the Ambrogi home to be safe and nurturing, but the pure occurrence of these accusations brought on a controversy that emerged from the aftermath. In 1991 while an artist in residence at Lightwork in Syracuse, NY, this controversy prompted Ambrogi to produce images further addressing the underlying social phobias and conventions that had become so pronounced two years earlier. The result was a series named X’s and O’s where by further using candid images of her daughters playing with a superimposed X or O, and text from a critical analysis of the sensuality of children, Ambrogi confronted the seemingly indiscriminate use of censorship and compared it to the childhood game of tick-tack-toe.

Ambrogi is currently an Associate Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology where she teaches courses addressing movement in imagery, censorship issues and women’s issues in art. She is also responsible for the formation of the Media Café project where students learn to produce imagery in time-based media and the changes that take place in their interpretation. She has been the recipient of several grants and awards including the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching.

-Michael Leonard

The Visual Studies Workshop holdings of work by Patti Ambrogi consist of 29 pieces spanning 1972 through 1991. The holdings consist of color and black and white images in both photographic and illustrative media. One cibachrome print titled “Cut on her arms and hands but not seriously injured” dated 1991. One exhibit catalogue from “Abstracted Identities” bears no date. Six mixed media (pastel, ink, pastel, pencil, watercolor) featuring abstract biomorphic forms, some readily identifiable and female icons. These pieces are untitled but signed within the piece following contour of the forms, dated 1977. Three gelatin silver prints featuring female figures abstracted through the use of a fish eye lens, the pose of the figure and use of shadow, printed in a circle, undated. Four two-tone screen prints largely constructed images using graphics, photographs, and line drawing, undated. Six silver gelatin prints depicting female and male figures abstracted by pose and shadow, dated 1972. Four pinhole silver gelatin prints focusing largely on light as it filters through foliage, 1980-81. Four copper toned silver gelatin prints depicting two nude female children in various poses with text discussing the 1977 Child Protection Act and its legal pitfalls; pieces undated. ML