Mike Komar was known as the Master of Disaster and Captain Chaos when he worked as an insurance adjuster specializing in hurricanes and other catastrophes. 

Now he is known as an artist after giving in to the woodworking bug inherited from his father and heeding advice from a friend: “If you aren’t doing what you love for a living, you might want to seriously consider it because we aren’t getting any younger.” 

His full-time career these days is his partnership in the Wood-2Art shop and showroom on Fort Myers’ Metro Parkway, a hive of the home improvement industry. 

A shining sample of his work helps set the cool vibe at Mark Loren Designs custom jewelry store on McGregor Blvd. Not-so-coincidentally, Loren is the friend who provided the career advice.  

Komar’s specialty showcases the outer (or live) edge of trees. The shape of the wood is retained rather than milled into straight, smooth lumber. That explains tables and desks shaped like artisan pizzas or even playground sliding boards. 

Wood tones can be spiced with added color from a full line of liquid plastics. Wood slabs can be sliced apart and reassembled surrounded by a sea of color. Logos of college alma maters or fire departments can be imbedded.  

Komar and his three woodworking partners turn out dining, coffee, and conference tables, desks, bartops, vanity tops, lamps, planters, fireplace mantels, staircases, accent walls, built-in media centers, ceiling beams, and specialty cabinets. 

“You dream it, we build it” is an apt Wood-2Art slogan. So is “We build what you can’t buy.” 

Scotty Marshall of Fort Myers, a client who had been shopping for the perfect dining room table, noticed the Wood-2Art sign on Metro Parkway. She and her husband, a contractor who knows all about applying colored epoxy to wood and countertops, swapped design ideas with Komar, selected a slab from inventory, and a month later they had their finished product. 

“It’s a piece of art,” she says, that would go with any décor—industrial, farmhouse, or contemporary. It is her first piece of live edge, she says, but it will not be her last. 

Donna Pearlstein of North Naples says Komar built two wall cabinet entertainment centers for her house at Mercato. Her interior design challenge was filling the empty wall space that comes with ceilings up to 30 feet high. Pearlstein brought Komar a wishful picture from magazine, and the results—her first experience with live edge—are “absolutely gorgeous. He is fantastic with wood and also understands design,” Pearlstein says. “He’s a perfectionist.”    

Komar hesitates when asked about the most unusual request made by a customer. “They’re all unusual—one of a kind,” he says. 

Stories that give a piece of wood and an end product provenance are popular with customers, who can bring their own raw materials. A prime example came after Hurricane Irma, when Wood-2Art produced coffee tables made from felled trees at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates.  

The storefront also offers milling and raw wood slabs, with some coming from Michigan, where a partner owns a golf course in need of constant tree replacement. Classes in woodworking and epoxy tutor novice and experienced hobbyists to graduate with a nice charcuterie board as a diploma. 

Komar and Wood-2Art are part of a national movement. According to the American Hardwood Information Center (AHIC), live edge “is an increasingly popular decorative trend.”  

Originally intended to re-create a log cabin or western look, the AHIC reported, live edge’s “unfinished natural edges and richly figured knotted surfaces fit perfectly into even the most sophisticated urban interiors.” 

Komar’s business model is nestled in the niche of boutique businesses that sell timber and/or build furnishings to customers’ specifications, the AHIC says. 

Komar sums up passion that he and clients have for live edge. “You just have to love wood,” he says. “It’s a universal language, like music. When I wake up in the morning, I am excited to go to my shop and create unique, beautiful furniture and art pieces. It’s not even like work anymore.”  

Jeff Lytle is the retired editorial page editor and TV host at the Naples Daily News. He resides in Bonita Springs.