How Five Newark Artists Decided to Share a Studio and Build Something Together

The Heights Makers Collective started with a storage problem. Tonya Alcott had more prints than she had wall space. Rafael Guerrero was binding books on a kitchen table that was also the dining table. Three other makers had similar situations. They found a studio space near NJIT and split the rent five ways. That was two years ago. Now the collective has a joint storefront, a shared website, and a reputation in Newark's maker community for work that is serious and priced honestly. I asked Tonya what made it work. She said: we all showed up on the same day and we kept showing up. That's it. That's the whole thing. The Heights Mural Print series — Tonya's documentation of University Heights' public art — is the kind of project that only gets made when someone has a studio and time and people around her who care about the same things she does.