Inside Somerville’s Bow Market, you may stumble across two unusual vending machines. These vending machines don’t dispense foods, drinks, or daily essentials, but instead, dispense stickers designed by local teens and photos of iconic Greater Boston locations.
The viral trend of collecting art from vending machines began in 2023 by the Maine-based artist Ana Inciardi, whose prints are sold at the Harvard Book Store. She included drawings of anything from symbols of New England to mundane objects.
But the Community Art Center in Cambridge was ahead of the trend when leadership purchased a vending machine in 2021, said Erin Muirhead McCarty, the executive director of the center.
“We had seen some of these vending machines done on the West Coast, but we had not seen them done in the Boston Metro area,” at the time, Muirhead McCarty said.
Today, the center has this machine in Bow Market plus two in Cambridge, one in The Garage in Harvard Square and the other in The Foundry. Its machine at Bow Market recently got a neighbor: a machine dispensing pictures by Cambridge-based photographer Jamie Ferguson.
Ferguson’s lavender-colored machine debuted on April 12 after the market contacted her with interest in hosting the machine and will remain there through the spring.
“It’s been really great so far,” said Ferguson. Somerville is “a community of people who really love supporting local businesses and local artists” and “the vending machine print craze online really helps drive traffic,” she said.
The 2-by-3-in. photos in her machine are of Fenway Park, Cambridge Public Library, Mt. Auburn Cemetery, and — Ferguson’s personal favorite — the Swan Boats. For $1.25 in quarters, art lovers can choose from six slots, each with four different photos, but only one of the four photos comes out, making the purchase ultimately a mystery.
Landscape photography wasn’t always what Ferguson did. Previously a portrait and event photographer, she wanted to get something out of her photography and make her art “more engaging.” So, in 2023, Ferguson shifted to solely doing art photography, or photos taken and edited in line with Ferguson’s creative vision.
Ferguson also began scouring eBay and Facebook Marketplace for a vintage vending machine after seeing a vendor sell stickers from a vintage machine. In early 2024, she bought a machine that originally dispensed stickers on eBay. She refurbished it with her father by cleaning and lubricating each piece and figuring out how to make the machine work consistently without the help of an instruction manual.
Once the machine was painted and full of photos, Ferguson reached out to local businesses to see if any were willing to collaborate. Brookline Booksmith hosted the machine in summer 2024 and then Porter Square Books in the Seaport did from spring 2025 through the holiday season.
Originally, Ferguson filled the machine with prints from all over, but ultimately decided to focus on prints of photos she’d taken of local spots.
Ferguson, who is a teacher in Walpole, typically spends one or two days per week printing, cutting, and packaging the pictures to restock the machine once per week or sometimes twice during the summer, she said. While she would not disclose how much income she generates, she said “This project has allowed me to reach a much wider audience both in Boston and online. I love that the machine encourages people to get out in their community and that it gets people excited about art.”
Community Art Center machines
The Community Art Center’s three machines don’t have area photos, but are full of stickers, digital and hand drawn prints, and embroidered textiles, each of which can be purchased for 50 cents. The oil pastel drawings of fruit, digital renderings of original characters, and watercolor paintings of flowers are all created by teenagers enrolled in the center’s Teen Public Art Program. None of the teens were avialable to speak with Cambridge Day. Muirhead McCarty said they especially enjoy that people have their “artwork in their pocket” or on their water bottle or laptop.
Pheebz Warner, the Teen Public Art program manager, added that “seeing their work come to life kind of changes them, makes them more confident, builds them into the young adults they’re striving to be.”
And the machines themselves are public art.
The center’s first-ever machine debuted in 2023 at The Foundry in Cambridge, two years after its purchase due to the teens undertaking four mural projects. The machine, Roy the Robot, is equipped with robot arms and galactic eyes, a design created by a teen and voted on by the others. The center’s most popular machine is the BigTop Circus, a six-slot machine covered by a red-and-white striped circus tent, which sits inside The Garage in Harvard Square, a high-traffic location. The Bow Market machine, known as Mama Dog and Pups, looks like a purple dog biting on a bone with three puppies at its feet. The Mama Dog is the main frame of the machine and is covered in fuzzy, shag-like purple faux fur with cutouts for yellow, menacing eyes. The three puppies, each displaying a different emotion, are three small gumball machines that dispense plastic capsules with two stickers inside.
“We want people to approach our vending machine[s] and have an experience beyond just what spits out of it,” said Muirhead McCarty.
The center refills the machines with new designs or remixes of old designs approximately once per month, according to Muirhead McCarty. The first time the Roy the Robot machine was refilled, quarters poured out of the back of the machine.
Although the center wouldn’t disclose exact revenue, Warner said their backpack “weighs a ton” when transporting the quarters from the machines to the bank. The machines help “treat the teens for their hard work” by funding field trips to the Institute of Contemporary Art or the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and food for special occasions, Warner added. It doesn’t currently have plans to add another.
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