Artist glues 250,000 pennies to the floor of her new gallery

Looking for a more creative alternative to tiling her floors, Mel Angst, of the newly opened Artisan tattoo and coffee gallery in Garfield, Pennsylvania, took to gluing pennies to the floor of her new studio.

Using nearly 250,000 pennies, Angst and her crew spent more than three hundred hours meticulously laying down each one cent piece. The floor was then sprayed over with the profile of Abraham Lincoln found on the penny. The resulting creation gives the art gallery an appropriate level of creativity and charm.



As an added bonus, Angst managed to save a few bucks in the process.

Work of Art: Mel Angst, of Garfield, Pennsylvania, glued about 250,000 pennies to the floor of her new gallery

‘Amazingly enough, we found out it’s a lot cheaper to just glue money to your floor than actually buy tile,’ Angst told WTAE in Pittsburgh . ‘It’s about three dollars a square foot.’



The entire project cost about $2,500, according to Angst. A quick glance at the Home Depot website revealed that while you can find tiles for less than $3 per square foot, none of the patterns were as fun as the face of Abraham Lincoln.

But price wasn’t really the problem for Angst. It was finding people who would be willing to crouch down and stick pennies to the floor for hours at a time. Soliciting people on Facebook, Angst managed to assembly a crack team of volunteers. Three to four people would work ten to sixteen hours a day for about three weeks straight.

Hard Work: Angst (right) said it took roughly 400 hours to get all the pennies glued down on her floor

"People are just shocked that we did it because it took about 400 man hours, which was crazy," Angst said.

For their troubles, the people who managed to stick around for more than 30 hours got a free tattoo, courtesy of Angst.

‘We’re all going to get a matching penny tattoo when it’s all said and done.'