Story of fueding carvers whose egos clashed and found them tussling over the right to claim dead palm tree stumps

Cocoa Beach artists carving more than reputations

By BILLY COX

TODAY Staff Writer

When the history of Cocoa Beach is assembled in encyclopedic form and cataloged into subdivisions such as Culture or Native Art, future generations will doubtlessly be intrigued by the chapter dealing with the Tiki Era. Archeologists rummaging through the layers of time will examine countless wooden icons distinguished by thick lips, giant teeth, leering grins, drooping scowls, heavy eyelids and flaring nostrils.

Just what conclusions they'll draw is anybody's guess, but count on a few best-sellers fraught with crazed histories about Easter Island Revisited and pagan 20th-century idolatry on the beaches of Florida's East Coast. But could the truth be any less compelling — that Cocoa Beach's Tiki Era was largely the signature of two feuding sculptors whose egos and
clashed and found them tussling over the right to claim dead tree stumps?

Appropriately, the records will show that, despite their acrimonious relationship, both men were hooked by the beat of different drummers.

Witness Wayne Coombs, 33, the
maniac, at
— a
Sasquatch whose size 15 feet were cast as the mold for the museum sculpture "
" borrowed from Cocoa Village three years ago. In November, Coombs will celebrate the 16th-year anniversary of Mai Tiki, his factory which established him as entrepreneurial fixture in Cocoa Beach. Lest there be any doubts, says he, "When it comes to tiki carving around here, man, I am the dude."

Witness Ed Volonnino, 25, 5-foot-6, 140, bushy mane and laissez-faire beard, straight out of a Haight-Ashbury time warp. Until recently, Volonnino, as
, set up shop only as far as he could
a lift. Now, he's managed to come across with a truck that has a small American flag tied to the aerial. His operation, called Ed's Heads, is based in a parking lot off A1A and he says things like, "I think there should be equal rights for head carvers."

Lately, Volonnino has been reading a Time-Life book called "The World of Michelangelo" and has been particularly impressed by the long-running feud between the main character and Leonardo Da Vinci. As contemporaries, Michelangelo found himself lacking the physical
that made Da Vinci such an object of public fascination. For that reason, Michelangelo felt
his work was inevitably
under the shadow of Da Vinci, even though Da Vinci was a painter.

Then, in the fall of 1504, as Time puts it, came "one of the most bizarre and dramatically personal confrontations in history as the crowning of the supreme artist of the age." The Florentine aristocracy commissioned both Da Vinci and Michelangelo (who decided to take up painting simply to prove himself Da Vinci's equal) to complete a mural apiece in the grand council hall of Palazzo della Signoria. Da Vinci got a
head start and, determined to catch up, Michelangelo worked like a man possessed and pushed himself to exhaustion.

Unfortunately, the point of that story is a subtle one because neither man finished their mural. Da Vinci watched in horror as his figures began changing color, melting down the walls in great blots and streaks. As for Michelangelo, Pope Julius II commanded him to knock off the foolishness and get his ass down to Rome for more significant endeavors.

Predictably, Volonnino misses the issue because he finds an analogy in it. "I guess, in a way, I kinda feel like Michelangelo," says Volonnino. "I'm tired of getting pushed around just because someone else has been around longer."

Future anthropologists will have to determine the exact origins of the Tiki Era polemics for themselves. It has been established, however, that Volonnino used to hang around Mai Tiki as far back as 1973 when he was a virtual apprentice, fashioning heads from clay instead of wood and getting Coombs' opinions. "He (Coombs) definitely inspired me," Volonnino says. "I still have a lot of respect for him."

Sometime thereafter, Volonnino decided to go commercial, and he made the mistake of assuming that dead trees along the sides of the road were fair game. "How else do you get exposure?" he asks. Volonnino was informed by the Department of Transportation that Coombs had already secured all stump rights for himself.

"It's not fair," Volonnino complains. "There's a million dead trees around here and who's to say they're all his trees? Every tree is his just because it's dead?"

Volonnino was attracted to a stump in front of
and decided to go pursue the diplomatic route. He says he called Cocoa Beach city manager July
to get approval to carve an Ed's Head. "He said he'd get back to me, and then he told me no," explains Volonnino. "A couple of days later, a face turns up on that same stump, done by you-know-who."

Tikis began disappearing. Coombs'
outside Merritt Square Mall. It stood for about eight months before it vanished. A year or so later, Volonnino decided to turn a couple of stumps outside the Mall into Ed's Heads. They vanished. "They mysteriously wound up in the river," their
Beki
says.

"They'd
with a chainsaw." Historians will likely spend years trying to assign the blame for
events, for both artists plead innocence in complicity.

"But see, I'm not only an artist, I'm a businessman too. I'm a lot more grown up about this business than I used to be. And just don't go around saying well I think I'm gonna carve that tree over there today. It doesn't work that way. Ed doesn't understand that. He's around and he'll never, never be
around here."

Furthermore, Coombs has broadened his artistic scope, which includes a recent
of hot
. "Two thousand
," he proclaims. Coombs' latest thing is interior design, most recently he remodeled the Cocoa Beach jazz bar,
. "I just can't make it all tiki heads,
," he adds
. "I'll carve." Which is mostly what Volonnino says he does every now and then.

Historians will likely debate over the events of the summer of '81 for some time to come. At a procedural hearing, Coombs claimed the city's dead trees by carving a "W" in them, but he suddenly began to notice the "W's were being scratched out with the letter 'E.'" One morning he discovered that a leg on his own personalized bumper "
".

To get even, Coombs went to
plantation, where the owners had set aside a stump for Volonnino to perform his Ed's Head. Coombs volunteered to do it for free, they agreed, and Volonnino came pedaling down on his bike to find out what was going on. Coombs chased Volonnino off by his ponytail,
him down
and hit him
if he didn't cut it out.

Coombs didn't take his adversary's denials seriously and he questioned an employee who admitted he'd drawn the "E's" himself. Coombs tried for
and made a
apology to Volonnino, but it didn't stop a misdemeanor assault charge. Coombs pleaded guilty in exasperation, paid a $100 fine (discounted by $50) and got six months probation. "Look at me," he says, referring to his dimensions, "I can't win."

Today, both artists' works are on display at opposite ends of the Merritt Square Mall. It may not be the Palazzo della Signoria, but it's
in
to-head competition as the Tiki Era will allow.

Future historians will also find
in the fact that both artists
only a few hundred yards from each other. Volonnino describes it this way: "I stay away from the guy, man." Adds Coombs, "I don't even want to see his face."