A new show of work E.F. Higgins, the king of mail art, opened May 12 at Van Der Plas Gallery, 156 Orchard St., with a series of the artist’s postage stamp paintings of his friends and his legendary firecracker paintings. Higgins, an important figure in Lower East Side’s Rivington School movement in the 1980s, died in December at 72.

Higgins moved into an LES apartment for $100 per month in 1976 and never left. “It was in New York where he fully engaged himself with mail art and seriously began the production of he new series of Doo Da post stamps,” guerilla artist and Higgins associate Istvan Kantor, aka Monty Cantsin Amen, wrote in the show’s program.

“The fact that he also became part of the infamous LES artist group, the Rivington School, was the natural continuity of his growing interest in street art, welding, performance art and drinking beer,” Kantor wrote.