Although I could not attend the Elmhurst Art Museum’s fall gala benefit at the Westin Hotel in Lombard, which featured a performance by Bonnie Koloc, I did happen to be at the museum on two occasions when she was there. I knew who she was, a folk singer, right? I was not prepared for all her other artistic talents, nor her warmth, humor and charm.

The Elmhurst Art Museum is presenting an exhibition of some of her work, which includes collage, paintings, repurposed old typeset trays on which she has created a sketchbook, and a special area where she has combined linocut black-and-white prints of various animals along with a short poem she wrote about each one and a CD of her singing each poem in a different musical style. If that is not enough, her handmade hats are available for sale in the museum gift shop.

Artists look at life and at things differently from the rest of us. They rarely throw away a less-than-successful painting or poem, song or piece of fabric and instead incorporate the best parts of these items into some other piece of art. The best artists have a unique view of the world, so that a town is not simply that but a setting or backdrop for the unfolding drama of life, an inspiration for a play, painting or piece of music. Reality becomes remolded into something different, sometimes delightful, often insightful, and, at its best, soaringly beautiful.

My two long conversations with Koloc revealed a warm-hearted, funny human who is engaged in the wonder of life. She is an Iowa native who came to Chicago in the 1960s to pursue a career in music and performed at the Earl of Old Town, then migrated to New York to work with noted director Joseph Papp as an actress, then returned to Chicago and Iowa to get an art degree.

When I commented on the interesting and beautiful hats she made from old ties and found fabrics and other materials, she laughed and said, “I’ve always loved hats, and I hardly ever work with a pattern. I just play around with the material until I have an interesting end product. I have also always haunted second hand stores over the years. I used to find 100 percent silk and satin slips from the 1930s and ’40s that I could fashion into wonderful outfits. I branched out to gauzy, white, flowing nightgowns I’d top with pinafores and wear with straw hats. I just loved creating those different looks.

“Once, when I was performing at the Earl of Old Town, I needed something to wear, so I took the lace tablecloth off my dining room table, wrapped it around myself, and pinned it in place. At the end of the evening, I put it back on the table.”

Her show at the Elmhurst Art Museum is “Visual Voice: Things have gone crazy in the garden.” As she explains in the brochure, it “is not only about my love for the garden but about my own place within the cycle of nature.”

She creates collages of vases of flowers by cutting up and reconstructing paintings, linocuts, drawings and monoprints – often adorned with written snippets of her poems and thoughts.

“The theme of this show is not just flowers and a garden,” she said, “but the idea that all things fade and deteriorate, find rebirth and eventually are gone.”

When I asked her about her studio, she laughed.

“Artists are not rich people. I have a small area in a downstairs room of my townhouse in Iowa. When I’m involved in a project, I get obsessive about it.”

I noticed that her right wrist was wrapped in a brace.

“It took a lot of cutting to make those collages,” she said.

It is true that only a few, whether visual or performing artists, make a lot of money. It is also true that we live in a world that values money and material goods very highly. Koloc, however, embodies a cornucopia of riches. In a 1997 one-woman performance at the College of DuPage titled “Trashmania,” – which she wrote, performed and designed its set – she suggests a wonderful world where we are all creative. That video plays in the museum lobby and is an inspiration as she is herself.

Koloc’s wonderful world of art and music is on display at the Elmhurst Art Museum until Sunday, Jan. 4.

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