Eileen Claveloux first met the late Klaus Postler when they were in an MFA program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the late 1990s. Aside from their mutual interest in art, she was intrigued by the way he sometimes wrote: backward.
It turned out that Postler, a Valley artist and independent curator who died in January 2013, had dyslexia and wrote backward — or in the conventional way — depending “on how his brain was working on a particular day,” Claveloux says.
The two became close friends and then life partners, living in Holyoke for several years before Postler died at age 61 at his studio in Conway.
Aside from being a talented collage artist and painter who was well-known in the mail art movement, Postler — a native of Yonkers, N.Y. — was a “kind, caring and very empathetic person” who also loved children, Claveloux says.
That’s why she’s made a donation this year, in Postler’s memory, to the Gazette’s Sidney F. Smith Toy Fund.
Named after a former business manager at the Gazette, the Toy Fund began in 1933 to help families in need during the Great Depression. Today, the fund distributes vouchers worth $50 to qualifying families for each child from age 1 to 14.
Claveloux, a photographer and video artist who now lives in Sunderland, says Postler took a while to get his degrees in art because of his struggles with dyslexia. But he eventually earned a BA from the UMass University Without Walls program and then got his MFA at the school in 2005; during his time there, he also won a MacDowell Colony Fellowship.
“He was very serious about being an artist, and he exchanged art with people from all over the world,” said Claveloux, who is now retired from a long career teaching art in a number of places, including Easthampton High School.
“He loved meeting new artists, new people, and he curated shows in Germany and Romania,” she added. “He loved Berlin in particular.”
Because he was so deeply committed to making art, Claveloux said, Postler did not have children of his own. But he was a natural around them, including her grandson, she says.
“I can still remember how they would play together and pretend to be pirates,” she said with a laugh. “Klaus used to say, ‘If kids and dogs could vote, I’d be emperor of the world!’ Kids were just drawn to him.”
Claveloux has donated to the Toy Fund in the past several years in memory of different people, including her parents, and donating in the name of her late partner and friend seemed a natural thing to do in the year that marks the 10th anniversary of his passing.
“Making sure children have presents at this time of year is so important,” she said, noting that the Toy Fund “is something Klaus would have really appreciated.”
To be eligible for the Toy Fund, families must live in any Hampshire County community except Ware, or in the southern Franklin County towns of Deerfield, Sunderland, Whately, Shutesbury and Leverett, and in Holyoke in Hampden County.
The following stores are participating this year: A2Z Science and Learning Store, 57 King St., Northampton; Blue Marble/Little Blue, 150 Main St., Level 1, Northampton; High Five Books, 141 N. Main St., Florence; The Toy Box, 201 N. Pleasant St., Amherst; and Comics N More, 64 Cottage St., Easthampton.
Others stores include Once Upon A Child,1458 Riverdale St., West Springfield; Plato’s Closet, 1472 Riverdale St., West Springfield; Sam’s Outdoor Outfitters, 227 Russell St., Hadley; Odyssey Bookshop, 9 College St., Village Commons, South Hadley; The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, 125 W. Bay Road, Amherst; World Eye Bookshop, 134 Main St., Greenfield; Holyoke Sporting Goods Co., and 1584 Dwight St. No. 1, Holyoke.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
