Given the fiery effects in many of his works, appropriately enough, Enyedi works out of his "Furnace Road Studio." He had it built in 1987 next to his home that he and his wife share in Northern Virginia (Web site address: www.furnaceroadstudio.com).

Without hesitation, he noted that his "art career would not exist without my wife. She's extremely supportive. She understands my need to do this [and] what I do. She helps in creating some of these things. She is my best critic. She has saved me from destroying pieces because I overworked them, and she has helped me create some pretty significant pieces. She's a real partner in all of this. I could not do it without her. She continues to be a major influence here at Furnace Road Studio."

Enyedi enjoys starting to work on a piece "with no idea where it will lead or what story it will finally tell. Frequently, my images start as happy accidents – a bit of overspray from painting some objects that becomes an entire new image. The trick is to look closely to see what is hidden and then build on the image to just the right point.

"While I relish the journey of discovery, I have been making art long enough with a specific focus on the American industrial landscape that a larger story has emerged. To tell this story, I have created an imaginary place called 'Milltown.' It is built on my recollection of a number of cities and towns in America's heartland that I have visited over the past 30 years – places like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Chicago but also places like Ellwood City,[Pa.], Steubenville, [Ohio], and Coshocton, [Ohio]. While my 'Milltown' exists only in my imagination, it feels like you could find it just around the next bend, and you could almost recall being there. It is a place built by – and around – industrial activity. It is a place where smokestacks and water towers take on the power of icons. It is a place that is vanishing.

"A huge economy changes what I consider a very big divide between the 'Silicon Valleys' of the world and the 'Monongahela Valleys.' And I think we can bridge that gap. People will not just look at some horrible thing that belches out smoke but look at what we have made there and how important it is to the American way of life.

Materials Enyedi uses to create his works include construction board, hand-folded paper, Masonite, industrial-strength material, acrylic, and graphite.

To construct his works, Enyedi uses any medium that comes to mind – whether creating an image on a computer, using a matboard knife to cut pieces for construction, using spray paint, or using iron filings in polymer emulsion to create "rust."

"I like that bounce between high-tech technology and smokestack imagery," he said, to create his works.

Janos Enyedi pauses with "Rustbelt elegy."

He has been drawing since he was a young child. He has loved creating art ever since. Understanding that he would have to find a way to support his "art habit," he became a Navy illustrator right out of Southern Illinois University during the Vietnam conflict.

Enyedi graduated from the Corcoran School of Art with a bachelor of fine arts degree and also attended graduate school at Ohio University.

While sales are currently in a slump, he has "been very fortunate to have some considerable success and shown my work all over the world."

His work is held in such high repute that he was invited to provide a piece for a show titled "True Colors" in response to the Sept. 11 terrorists' attacks on the U.S. He created "Reconstructivist Landscape from Sea to Shining Sea" for the exhibit. The piece is a three-dimensional crane on the front of a very elaborately framed piece of art. Part of the frame looks like the crane is lowering it back into place from a riveted sky – like the plates from a battleship. The exhibit has traveled from Washington to New York to the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul and a couple other stops back to Los Angeles. "It's a really compelling exhibit," he said.

The first piece that Enyedi made was "Fire Escape – Souvenir of Washington, Pa." That factory has been for lease for 30 years, and there have been no takers.

He has no people in his art work because it's the place that fascinates him. He mused: "We all can imagine that things are made there. But the real story is about the lives that are invested in the work place. People who work in industry – especially heavy industry – are really very extraordinary. . . . They just walked off the frame, and you missed them. They're vanishing, too," he winced.

For optimal impact, Enyedi meticulously replicates texture, surface, patterns. He uses "a lot of similar little elements – water towers and smokestacks, and triangle roofs as tools to convey a whole other level of information. Also, from an artistic point of view, these images are about the remarkable beauty that can be found in rivets and corrugation, I-beams, torch-cut steel edges, welds, and even rust – especially rust. Ashes to ashes; rust to rust is a statement about the transient nature of our existence."

He thinks "every American should go visit a steel mill" in order to understand "the raw power of such places. What frightens me is they are disappearing. . . .

"There are still people out there with great skill and great dedication who are making those things. We have a tendency to forget all about them. I think that's very bad, because they're real heroes.

"One of the most important contributions to homeland security for the United States would be putting its workers back to work and not losing these skills and abilities to make these things. It affects our national security, our way of life, and who we are as Americans.

"Industry is our heart, aorta, and all our veins and capillaries. You can't have one without the other. Industry and labor and management and everyone can certainly always be a lot smarter and work harder at what we do," Enyedi said.

He is delighted with the response of people who see his work and then notice industrial sites, take photographs, and send prints to him. Those people "suddenly are not looking at a blight on the landscape. They are seeing rich details that make up the American industrial landscape that has been – and hopefully will be – the backbone of the country."

He fervently hopes his art as recorded images of America's industrial sites will not become "artifacts."

Many of his works hang in a wide range of corporate galleries – including Deloitte & Touche and Bayer Corp. in Pittsburgh; the Department of State in Washington, D.C., Paris, and Germany; Champion Paper Co.; and Lee Technologies, McLean, Va. Individuals also purchase his art.

For 30 years, he has "been traveling around the country, looking at the industrial landscape. The major thing I've noticed is that that landscape is vanishing – and along with it the jobs and talents of America's skilled workers.

"When a major factory closes in a large city, we generally make note of it. But very few comment on all the little factories and shops that are closed in the little 'Milltowns' across our country. These are the shops that are built into communities, and, when those shops close, the entire town is affected."

Enyedi still has "a whole lot more art to make, and I don't know exactly where it's going to go. I guess the basic thing that I would like to accomplish with this art work is to get people who look at my art to see something new that will ring a very deep-seated bell. I hope they will go back and look at the American industrial landscape and reflect what that landscape is all about."

When his exhibit at the federation came down, Enyedi recounted his thoughts: "I walked by the front of the AFL-CIO lobby. It was after dark, and I looked in the big windows at my art and turned to look at the White House – also all lit up. My immediate thought was how glad I was that my Hungarian grandparents decided to come to this country . . . just to breathe the clean, fresh air of freedom. Their hard work and belief turned into 'Working Spaces – Working Places.'"