PENNY BOY · GUEST SPOT · LAGUNA BEACH, CA
Laguna Beach has staged the Festival of Arts and its Pageant of the Masters every summer for more than ninety years — a coastline that treats the human figure as a canvas worth framing. Penny Boy's award-winning full backs belong to that tradition. When he tours Orange County, he takes only a handful of backs, by application.
A closed selection of Penny’s award-winning full backs — see them all & in motion, or view the art gallery.
Orange County collectors already live among originals — the Laguna Art Museum, the plein-air galleries along the PCH, the summer art colony that fills the canyon in July. They know the difference between decoration and a commissioned work. That is the only thing Penny Boy (Massimiliano Pennella) does: the back, and nothing else. With 100+ international awards and a Best in Show behind him, he builds one large-scale piece at a time — neo-traditional, black-and-grey or color — over multiple sessions, to sit on your spine for decades. He keeps no permanent chair in California; a Laguna or wider OC guest-spot opens only for approved projects.
Not as a resident exhibitor — Penny is a destination back artist, not a local studio. But the summer weeks, when Laguna fills for the Festival of Arts and the Pageant of the Masters, are exactly when he tries to open an Orange County guest-spot window. Approved applicants are given the dates first.
No. He travels on application only, so there is no fixed OC chair. When a tour window lines up, he takes a small number of full backs across the county — from Laguna Beach to Newport and Irvine — and nothing else.
There is no price list. A full back is a multi-session commission, quoted individually only after your application has been reviewed and approved.