Photograph: Courtesy Of Center For Book Arts

Artist buZ blurr first discovered mail art via a 1972 Rolling Stone article, and though it’s bad form to put a living person on a stamp—or stamplike art—self-portraits like Letter Head (2007) have become an annual tradition for him. “I send them out on my birthday,” says the 64-year-old Arkansas native, “so it’s kind of like documenting my impending demise.”

Photograph: Courtesy Of Center For Book Arts

We thought Charles Barth’s muscle man was some kind of commentary on the Male Gaze, but it turns out there’s less to it than meets the eye. “If you didn’t see the words in print,” says Barth, “you might interpret mail art as art made by males only, as visuals of males or as art made of mailed letters.” Wow, deep.

Photograph: Courtesy Of Center For Book Arts

“It’s not a woman, really, but the well-known French singer Henri Salvador,” says artist Vittore Baroni of this Pippi Longstocking–like envelope, which he began crafting in Italybefore mailing it to British Columbian artist Anna Banana for completion. “The image is from a clip of the song ‘Juanita Banana,’ where Salvador dresses up and interprets various characters,” Salvador explains. “The video is exhilarating—I think Keith Haring nicked some ideas from it for a famous video he made for Grace Jones.”