07 Aug 2023 Bonnie Alberts’ life of imagination

By Kelli Reep

Creativity is in Bonnie Alberts’ blood. The owner of She Studios in Little Rock, Alberts is a relative newcomer to the art world, but has always pursued art in some form since she was a child.

“As a kid, my grandmother taught me to crochet, my mother taught me ceramics, and there was a short flirtation with hook-a-rug, but none of those lasted very long,” Alberts said. “Guitar and songwriting got me through my teen years. In my late teens through my mid-20s, I developed a deep love for cooking and baking. The culinary arts lost their allure, however, when I had to make dinner for my family every night. And I was in my late 30s when interior decorating became my passion. I tried drawing and painting numerous times, but the most I could ever produce were extremely intricate doodles and paint-by-number paintings. For years I felt like an artist without a medium, but photography, like a decades-long marriage filled with its many ups and downs, had always been my constant companion.”

Alberts’ decades-long passion for photography began when she was 12 and received a box camera as a present. “That’s what first exposed me to the beauty of solitary seascapes, rural landscapes, stark, cold winter scenes, black and white photography, and the joy of the dark room,” she explains. “Pulling a print out of the solution to hang dry and seeing it come to life was transformative.”

From the beginning, the resounding theme in her images was solitude. While living in Italy, Alberts became increasingly interested in color and texture — the deeply saturated colors of the Mediterranean, and the gritty textures one might only find in a centuries-old city. Never straying far from the theme of solitude, even in a chaotic city of a million souls, she remembers ‘unplugging’ her images from the noise that surrounded them. “I continue to play with color and ‘unplug’ my images today in a very different way,” the artist said.

She founded She Studios in 2015, although it did not begin as such. The company was Partenope Press, an independent publishing company she formed to print a travel guide to Naples. It was the COVID-19 pandemic that made her change course.

Partenope Press was an indie publishing company formed to publish the Napoli Unplugged Guide to Naples, a travel guide Alberts created and co-wrote. “After our unexpected move to Arkansas and the onset of the pandemic, I changed course. 

“Unable to travel during lockdown, I looked to my vast repository of images for a new form of creative expression,” Alberts said. “Meanwhile, I changed the name of my company to She Studios and retooled it to bring all my creative endeavors under one virtual roof. I chose the monicker ‘SHE’ to celebrate the talented, intelligent, creative, impassioned, strong, confident, and amazing women I met along the way and to honor my fellow women veterans.”

Alberts is a Navy veteran, joining the service when she was 19. She was a bit of a vagabond after leaving her New Jersey home and traveling to Seattle, Florida, Georgia, Spain, Guam, Virginia, Italy, and now north central Arkansas. “My husband and I love living in Little Rock and Central Arkansas,” she said. “A small city by comparison, it is not too crowded, easy to get around, has all the amenities we could want or need, and an abundance of green space. We have season tickets for the Travelers and love the shows and plays at the Arkansas Repertory and Robinson Theaters. 

As a self-taught photographer, Alberts has developed a process, which turned her passions for photography, art and historic preservation into what she calls “artful creations that celebrate our favorite places.” She considers herself an Arkansas transplant and brings a unique perspective and a photographic eye to her current work, a collection of more than 150 designs that celebrate the Natural State. 

“It’s a fusion of creativity and technology (my left brain and right brain are spit equally down the middle),” she said. “My designs exist purely in the digital world until they are printed. They are neither hand drawn, nor hand painted, but rather created with a digital camera and photo editing software that helps me to transform my images from a photo into something evocative of a watercolor over a pen and ink drawing. Focusing on the built environment, I use a 21st century approach to create images that recall a simpler place and time. I bring my designs to life on a variety of substrates. For paper prints and note cards, I use professional inkjet printers with pigment inks and print on high quality cotton rag art paper. I use a sublimation printer and heat press for my ornaments, coasters, zipper bags, tote bags, tea towels, notebooks, coffee mugs and other such products. I hope that through my Arkansas Heritage Collection, I am helping to promote Arkansas’s rich cultural and natural heritage and cultivate a broader appreciation of that heritage by both tourists and Arkansans alike.”