(From left) Little Wish Toys owner Shan Habbas and Aaryanna Nijjar-Simmonds with their creation Bumblewump
In her seven-year career as a designer, Aaryanna Nijjar-Simmonds has learned that selling art can be an uphill battle.
“I have struggled with medical complexities in my adult life, and being a mom and having a full-time job make showing up to art markets [less] feasible,” she says. And she knows she’s not alone. “There are artists that are solo parents. There are artists that have disabilities,” she adds.
To make sales easier for Richmond’s small makers, she created a solution that’s about 6 feet tall and 3 feet wide. In 2025, Nijjar-Simmonds, who designs and sells stickers, keychains, totes and more under the moniker Disco Bunny, installed a vending machine at Brookland Park’s Scrap Creative Reuse, stocked with work from local artists. Less than a year later, she now operates three machines and works with 75 artists to fill the devices.
Aaryanna Nijjar-Simmonds
Nijjar-Simmonds stocks stickers, postcards, prints and more behind the glass. “I screen all the artwork to make sure it’s family friendly, because we have to be conscious of who is getting what type of art,” she says. Item prices are capped at $20, and all proceeds go directly to the artists.
Designed by Nijjar-Simmonds in collaboration with local artists and the host businesses, the machines are works of art in their own right, each reflecting an intentional theme. Scrap’s vending machine represents a house, complete with windows, street number and a stoop, while the second machine — inside Gold Lion Community Cafe in Manchester — resembles a South Asian tuk-tuk (a three-wheeled vehicle). “The tuk-tuk was connecting me back to my Indian heritage, which I had become very distant from,” she says.
The latest installation is a gold-horned, three-eyed, blue-haired monster named Bumblewump, placed inside Jackson Ward’s Little Wish Toys in January.
“We have definitely had a mix of people coming in because they have heard about Bumblewump and they want to see him in person, or maybe they’re an artist who’s interested in being in the machine,” says Shan Habbas, owner of Little Wish. “We have people who are just so charmed, because they thought they were coming to a toy store, but then we have this.”
To have works featured in the machines, artists pay a fee of $35 a month, a price point lower than many vendor fees for maker’s market events, according to Nijjar-Simmonds. Artists maintain their spots for six months, then a random lottery determines a new crop of works.
Though Nijjar-Simmonds moved abroad this spring, she continues to operate the machines and expand their presence with help from Helen Bodde, a fellow artist and co-founder of the Latino-art market Artes RVA. “Where the community asks for [a machine] is where we try to go,” Nijjar-Simmonds says. “This is really community-based, which is important to me.”
