“In 1989 or early 1990, I was talking on the phone with Flo Davis, Gene Davis’ widow, who was a dear friend to Diana and I. She had just returned from a symposium on Gene’s work in Florida. As we talked, I sketched a small and stylized water tower. As we ended our conversation, Flo remarked that she wasn’t feeling well and that she had a doctors’ appointment that afternoon. Sadly, at that appointment she was diagnosed with a cancer that would quickly take her life. For months, after Flo’s death, I would occasionally come across the sketch — and just stare at it. I knew I wanted, in fact, had to use it, but I wasn’t sure how. It was far simpler than the landscapes I was working on at the time.

As an aside, I always try to work late in the studio in the autumn, on the night the clocks “fall back”. I consider the extra hour an almost magical one. On that night in 1990, I took the sketch and began constructing it as a relief surface. I worked, non-stop, through the night and at sunrise looked at a completed Go With the Flo — the first Industrial Strength Icon. Not only was I delighted with the artwork, but also in it I could see what has become a full decade of images.

They have grown and changed, but they all started with Go With the Flo. It was an exhilarating moment that artists only rarely experience.”

Janos Enyedi, 1990s

excerpted from Memories of Milltontown, catalog.

Go with the Flo, 1990

Acrylic and Graphite on Illustration Board
H. 40” L. 30” D. 5”   (Private Collection)

Hydraulics, 1991

Acrylic, graphite & aluminum tube on illustration board
H. 40” L. 30” D. 5”   (Private Collection)