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FAVIO Biography

Frank Milordi (aka FAVIO) has lead a dual life for the last 20 years. He is an Engineering Manager and Director of a 750 person Engineering Organization for a major Aerospace company and has been an artist representative and publisher who now has morphed into producing and representing his own art.

Mr. Milordi has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s in Engineering Science. His engineering career started 1964 for York Division of Borg Warner where his work as a test engineer focusing on noise reduction of air conditioning systems including those for large buildings and the Polaris submarine. In the late 60’s, Mr. Milordi transferred to Grumman Aerospace and was involved as a group leader in real time testing and analysis of sophisticated military aircraft such as the F-14, EA-6B and the E-2C. In the mid 70’s, he worked as the integration lead on a real time signal and data processing facility focused on advanced airborne radar modes for the detection of moving targets at extended ranges. This experience resulted in ever increasing responsible assignments including Software Project Lead and Site Manager for an advanced phased array radar system installed in an F-111 aircraft and tested in the early 80’s at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.

In 1982, art entered into his daily life, first as a collector of limited edition prints, then eventually in 1983 as a part time art dealer. Not wanting to sell what most art dealers were selling, Mr. Milordi started to represent and publish several artists which lead to participation in major art shows in New York City and Los Angeles. He was growing his art business while he was working 60-70 hour weeks preparing the proposal to the Air Force that lead to Grumman’s selection in 1985
as the Joint STARS contractor. This competitive victory culminated 10 years of development of advanced radar modes resulting in his assignment as Engineering Manager of the $700M, Joint STARS project.

After 1986, the Joint STARS project transferred from Long Island, NY to Melbourne FL. He decided to stay on Long Island as Manager of the advanced real time Automated Telemetry System, which contained state-of-the-art computer systems needed to analyze the treacherous test environment of high speed Navy fighters. Although still in a position of significant responsibility, he continued to increase his art knowledge and expanded his representation of emerging artists. This representation included producing and conducting trendy gallery shows in SOHO, NYC.

In the late 1980’s, Mr. Milordi was asked to join a startup company that was focused on working with the estate of the late and great Dutch artist, M.C. Escher. During one long weekend, he single handedly wrote a 30 page product proposal and business plan that was submitted to the estate of M.C. Escher. One month later they had a contract in hand with artistic interpretation and production, the sole responsibility of Mr. Milordi. Escher images were transformed from lithographs to etchings, from woodcuts to images laser cut into wood, from delicate pencil drawing to etched glass, from small water color planar images to large full color lithographs, from lithographs to bronze sculptures and finally from impossible objects to 3 dimensional sculptures which were used as a basis for holograms.

Mr. Milordi was able to produce this broad spectrum of products because through the years he educated himself on the production process needed to produce quality art objects, including alliances with foundries, ateliers and etching establishments. This education also included authentication of limited edition prints of famous artist such as Dali, Chagall and Miro. Mr. Milordi acquired catalogue resonnnaes and a keen eye to interpret images and signatures. He became a dealer that other dealers sought out to verify the authenticity of specific limited edition prints.

In 1991, Mr. Milordi’s focused on helping Grumman win a major space satellite contract, its first since 1973. As the deputy to the program vice president, he lead the sophisticated simulation of the satellite system and infrared sensor required for the detection and tracking of a massive ICBM attack. During this time artists were still being represented and published. However, in 1994, after Grumman merged with Northrop, their satellite systems was transferred to another Northrop Grumman division and would eventually be relocated to Baltimore MD. Mr. Milordi decided to accept a long standing offer and rejoined the Joint STARS program in Melbourne, Florida. He was assigned to manage an advanced radar and tracking systems program for the Technology Department. Within 18 months and fueled by his people-oriented management style and the overwhelming success of the radar and tracking program, he became Director of the 60 person Technology Department. Under his leadership the department grew to 120 and in 1998, Mr. Milordi accepted the position of Director of the 600 person Engineering Department which eventually grew to 750 as Technology and Logistics were integrated under Mr. Milordi’s leadership. Even though the day to day running of a 750 person department kept him extremely busy, Mr. Milordi never lost contact with the art scene and still managed to make an occasional sale, especially the works of M.C. Escher.

Images of M.C. Escher and other artists such as AGAM always had a fascination because of their mathematical and geometric roots. In the mid 1980’s, Mr. Milordi was exposed to fractals and chaos theory and the early computer programs that produced simple but fascinating black and white images. This interest continued through the 1990’s and finally culminated in serious exploration of this infinite mathematical space in 1999. Although producing “nice” images they were not different enough to set them apart from other computer generated images.

A computer virus set the stage for the images that are now produced. His 166 MHz PC was replaced by a 2 GHZ state of the art PC that allowed deeper exploration of the mathematical space in one tenth the time. Towards the end of 2002, the “nice” images were replaced by very different images that passed the discerning eye of Mr. Milordi’s art partner and wife, Peggy. Her encouragement was the final push that was needed to go public.

Before he could go public, there was the issue that Mr. Milordi, was still representing artists, and he wanted to initially remain anonymous. Thus the name FAVIO was created which is an acronym based on his full name Frank Walter Vincent Milordi (i.e. FAVIO).

FAVIO went public in September 2003. Mr. Milordi retired at the end of 2007 and now devotes full time to FAVIO