Artist visits Orlando, carves free sculpture on roadside tree

Artist carves his niche in trees

By John Wark — Sentinel-Star

A few yards east of the former Gold Triangle store near busy Maguire Boulevard in Orlando is a trio of 20-foot palms. One is dead, without any fronds.

Thursday it acquired a face.

A foot and a half high, its eyes recede vacantly into the heart of the tree. The nose is large, with flaring nostrils. A heavy mustache droops around the corners of the open mouth, tangling in strands of beard.

The name "Ed" has been carved in large letters beneath the beard.

It looks vaguely like Ed Volonnino, a husky 23-year-old Cocoa Beach resident who works part
what he earns by selling his wood sculptures.

Using a mallet, a dozen different gouging tools, a butane torch and sandpaper, the largely self-taught artist completed the head in four hours.

Volonnino has carved heads on two dozen dead palms around Cocoa Beach because "it's kind of neat to walk through the woods and come upon a sculpture."

He said that while he's visiting Orlando he'd like to do "as many heads as I can and just leave them all over for people to find."

Some of his "free sculptures" have proved more popular than he would like. "I did one big head for this chick I knew, with a nice crown on it, nice detail, you know, and someone took a chain saw to it and it was gone," he said. "I've had them disap-
.

Volonnino chips away at the dead Orlando palm tree as he carves a face into it.

Andrew Hickman / Sentinel Star