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

rivalry carries on.

By BILLY COX
TODAY Staff Writer

When the history of Cocoa Beach is assembled in encyclopedia form and catalogued 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 histrionics 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 parallel visions 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 bonded by the beat of different drummers.

Witness Wayne Coombs, 33, the entrenched pragmatist, at 6-foot-9, 235 pounds, a homegrown Sasquatch whose size 15½ foot was cast as the mold for the notorious sculpture "Fountainhead," banned from Cocoa Village three years ago. In November, Coombs will celebrate the 10th-year anniversary of Mai Tiki, his factory which established him an entrepreneurial fixture in Cocoa Beach. Lest there be any doubt, says he, "When it comes to tiki carvings around here, man, I am the duke."

Witness Ed Volonnino, 25, 5-foot-8, 140, bushy mane and laissez-fair beard, straight out of a Haight-Ashbury time warp. Until recently, Volonnino, an iguana-lover, set up shop only as far as he could thumb 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 dynamism that made Da Vinci such an object of public fascination. For that reason, Michelangelo felt reaction to his work was inevitably muted 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 dramatic 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 an 8-month head start and, determined to catch up, Michelangelo worked like a man possessed and pushed himself to exhaustion.

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

Predictably, Volonnino raises 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 1978 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 zillion 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 Slick's lounge and decided to go pursue the diplomatic route. He says he called Cocoa Beach city manager Elly Johnson to get approval to carve an Ed's Head. "He said he'd get back to me, and then he told me no," recalls Volonnino. "A couple of days later, a face turns up on that same stump, done by you-know-who."

Tikis began disappearing. Coombs had one outside Merritt Square Mall. It lasted 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 near Fun Time Boats," Volonnino says. "They'd been sliced up with a chainsaw." Historians will likely spend years trying to assign the blame for those events, for both artists plead innocent to complicity.

"Hey," says Coombs, "I've got a soft heart and that's why I don't hate Ed. He's not 'bumming' around, he's got his own job and he's carrying his own weight. In fact, I admire him for that.

"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. You 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 second and he'll never, never be first around here."

Furthermore, Coombs has broadened his artistic scope, which equates into a recent expansion of his building. "Two thousand feet," he proclaims. Coombs' latest thing is interior design, most recently the remodeled Cocoa Beach jazz bar, Spirits. "I just can't make it on tikis alone; otherwise," he adds pointedly, "I'd starve." Which is exactly 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. As a procedural matter, 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 log on his own porched had the letter "E" printed on it.

To get even, Coombs went to Brassy's nightclub, where the owners had set aside a stump for Volonnino to perform an Ed's Head. Coombs volunteered to do it for free, they agreed, and Volonnino came pedaling along on his bike to find out what was going on. Coombs yanked Volonnino off by his ponytail, pinned him down (no blows exchanged) and told him what'd happen to him if he didn't cut it out.

Coombs didn't take his adversary's denials seriously until he questioned an employee, who admitted he'd drawn the "E" himself. Coombs fired the guy and made a reluctant apology to Volonnino, but it didn't stop a subsequent assault charge. Coombs pleaded guilty in exasperation, had a $160 fine discounted by $100, and got six months self-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 probably as close to head-to-head competition as the Tiki Era will offer.

Future historians will also find titillation in the fact that both artists lived 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."