A Utah artist created 100 wacky caricatures of pop culture icons. Here’s where to see them.

Chances are if you step into Coffee Garden, you’ll see 100 different faces staring back at you.

If you’ve visited recently, those 100 faces are separate from the regular patrons at the busy coffee shop in Salt Lake City’s 9th and 9th neighborhood, and a bit more recognizable — since they belong to famous pop-culture figures.

The 100 artworks were created by Utah artist Scott Perry, a collection that represents his take on the 100-Day Project, an online art challenge. Artists are encouraged to share their progress and their work on social media for each day of the 100-day event.

The Coffee Garden’s west wall is the backdrop to the 100 colorful, bright and hilarious depictions drawn by Perry. Some figures make iconic faces associated with them, while others simply smile.

Perry said he learned about the challenge from a friend who had participated in it in the past, and planned to do it this year. His friend, Perry said, encouraged him to participate in the challenge with caricatures.

“I thought it’s a pretty daunting task. And I don’t know if I really want to, but I did one of Willie Nelson, and then I did one of Leonardo DiCaprio, and then it just kind of started going where I couldn’t quit,” Perry said.

As Perry put it, he started becoming obsessed with the fun challenge. Perry shared tales of waking up at 2 a.m. to perfect the shape of Barbra Steisand’s nose, taking an hour and a half to do so. He spent three days on Freddie Mercury’s artwork to get him just right. All in all, he’s captured 100 different pop culture figures, ranging from the early 1960s to the present. Some of the famous figures he captured include Snoop Dogg, David Bowie, Taylor Swift, Elvis Presley, Audrey Hepburn and Jenna Ortega.

“It was a fun challenge, and I’m glad I made it, but now I’m kind of going through withdrawals,” Perry admitted.

Perry said he created the caricatures using Adobe Illustrator. “With the click of a mouse or the keyboard, I would just go through and I’d start with the head shape, and then add a couple of ears, and from then on, it was just that they have really huge eyebrows, or little teeny nose, or crossed eyes, or whatever,” he said.

From there, he would go back and make edits, tinker with it until he was satisfied, and then move onto the next person. Some, like Mercury’s, took a while, Perry said — while the caricature of Rowan Atkinson’s character Mr. Bean only took half an hour.

Perry also joked that he is a “computer idiot” but this challenge has been affirming for him. He graduated from Utah Technical College (now known as Salt Lake Community College) the year before the Macbook was released, so he was trained in design by hand.

“My whole career, I was fighting computer stuff and hated it, and that was kind of a downfall of my career,” he said. “To find out that I actually can do something that works is really self-gratifying.”

Perry — who worked for many years as art director at Salt Lake magazine — said he’s always been interested in art, and started drawing caricatures when he was 12.

“I read Mad magazine, and I’ve always been a pop culture nut. So they’d do their movie satires, and I would read those, and just was enamored with the artwork,” Perry said. “I just started to try to do my own, copying the stuff that was in the magazine with [Charlton] Heston and Barbra Streisand. Then I started doing kind of my own stuff.”

When he was in school, Perry said he started drawing caricatures of his friends and teachers.

“I had a history teacher who assigned these 10-page things that you have to write,” he said. “I would write three pages that do a caricature of him as Mona Lisa or King Arthur on the front of the cover. And I always get an A just because of the flattery, I guess.”

Picking a favorite artwork from the collection is hard, Perry said, because he likes them all for different reasons. When he was working on Sylvester Stallone, Perry said he drew him as the boxer Rocky Balboa.

“With every little click of a mouse, I would do another bruise on his face and fatten his lip. It was just kind of fun to sit there and punch away at Sylvester Stallone for an afternoon,” Perry said. He also had a fun time working on Maggie Smith’s expression, and working on Fred Rogers and Mr. Bean.

Perry is releasing a book of his 100 creations, called “Smugshot,” through The King’s English Bookshop. He is also planning on opening an Etsy shop, where he’ll sell coffee mugs and mouse pads with the caricatures.

The artwork at Coffee Garden, Perry said, will be up for some time. He described himself as a regular at the shop and said he goes in for a few hours every afternoon. (That’s also how his artwork came to be at the shop, after showing the owner Alan Hebertson some pictures on his phone, Perry said he was encouraged to display them up in the shop.)

“It’s fun to go to the Coffee Garden and just sit there incognito and watch people’s expressions. They’ll come in and kind of stop dead in their tracks,” Perry said.

“I just love sitting in the corner and watching people point and try to guess,” he said. “There was one woman, I’ve seen her three days in a row, and she just sits and smiles and smiles and smiles, and it’s just fun to see that, to liven up the place and bring some joy into the world. Sounds cliche, but it’s true.”