By Hongyu Liu

The Somerville community gathered at the Union Square on November 7 to celebrate the Ignite Festival. Due to the pandemic, the festival this year focused on showing works from local artists and attracting customers to local restaurants.

The Somerville Arts Council presented the Somerville Community Lantern Project at the heart of Union Square. It included hundreds of paper bag lanterns made by community members. The drawings on these lanterns ranged from beautiful patterns to political messages calling on people to vote.

Martha Friend is a local resident of Somerville. She came to check out the event and the new works by local artists. She participated in the Somerville Community Lantern Project. Here she is showing the lantern with the leaf patterns she drew. “I think it is so important that this kind of outdoor event continues to happen. The Arts Council worked very hard,” she said.

Local artist Nathaniel Devarie showed his latest paintings at Union Square. “The girl with dogs” is his first collection of works during the pandemic. Devarie says, “Since the quarantine started, I had been painting hard inside my house. I painted this girl with dogs. I painted more dogs every week, so there are more and more dogs. By the end of the summer I had around fifty dogs all around the yard.”

The dragon is his latest work, made exclusively for the festival. The painting has two parts. Visitors can step in between the two parts to take photos.

The festival also aimed to attract customers for local restaurants. Ten culinary business participated in the event. Following the pandemic regulations, the restaurants reduced the number of seats indoors and offered outdoor dining spaces.

Restaurants featured special dishes to prepare for the festival. Machu Picchu, a Peruvian restaurant in Somerville, offered customers weekend specials, including Lomo a la Huancaina, a typical Peruvian dish. The restaurant was full by around 8:00 p.m. Customers waited outside for a table.

— Photos by Hongyu Liu