Cynthia Plaster Caster
aka Cynthia Dorothy Albritton
(May 24, 1947 – April 21, 2022)
Cynthia Plaster Caster became famous for creating plaster casts of musicians’ erect penises. From 1968 through 2014, she cast over 70 phalluses of mostly rock and punk musicians, tour and road managers, actors, and artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, actor and singer Anthony Newley, and “Ivan” of the Flying Karamazov Brothers. Many of these plaster molds were also cast in bronze.
In 2000, she began casting female musicians’ breasts including Suzi Gardner of L7, singer Peaches, and Karen O. from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Cynthia Dorothy Albritton was born in Chicago. Shy as a young girl, Albritton sought out a way to make contact with the opposite sex. In the late 1960s, she became caught up in free love and rock music.
Cynthia studied at the University of Illinois Chicago. In college, when her art teacher gave the class an assignment to ‘plaster cast something solid that could retain its shape’, she hit upon the idea of casting erect male genitalia, which would then go flaccid and exit the mold. Finding a dental mold-making substance called alginate to be sufficient, she found her first celebrity client in Jimi Hendrix, the first of many to submit to the idea.
Meeting Frank Zappa, who found the concept of casting both humorous and creative as an art form (though he himself had no interest in submitting to the procedure), Cynthia found in him something of a patron.
Zappa moved her to Los Angeles, which she described as a veritable groupie heaven, with no lack of willing assistants eager to prepare the subjects for casting.
Cynthia left home at 19 and teamed up with a younger friend, Dianne, who she had met at the Rolling Stones’ hotel in 1965. They called themselves “the Plaster Casters of Chicago” and set about breaking molds of their own.
Cynthia and Dianne dreamed of one day having their own exhibition – although Dianne dropped out of casting soon after.
The two became notorious thanks to Rolling Stone magazine’s 1969 “groupie issue”, which profiled top shaggers like Des Barres, Miss Mercy, Trixie Merkin and a number of others that rocker Frank Zappa had assembled in a girl-band called the GTOs. Albritton was never ashamed of the term “groupie” – which characterized fans, and not the rock stars who willingly slept with them, as being loose – yet she also wanted to be different. It was plaster casting, she decided, that would make them stand out.
The Plaster Casters of Chicago suitcase served to transport casting materials and act as a calling-card
Carrying a black suitcase tagged with an oval “Plaster Casters of Chicago” label, the artist arrived backstage at concerts or at hotels with a ready-made pitch and the tools to make it happen. Cathy was soon being profiled alongside other so-called groupies Pamela Des Barres, Judith Peters (“Miss Mercy”) and Christine Frka (“Miss Christine”) in Rolling Stone.
In the Plaster Caster's diary, Cynthia said that a penis is called a ‘plater’ and a ‘fellator’ is called a ‘plater’. All the terms are part of British slang, taught the two girls by members of a popular British group.
From the diary of the Plaster Casters, pages seven and eight, concerning the popular lead guitarist (Jimi Hendrix) was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter:
As times went on, there were, inevitably, mishaps. Peter Tork of the Monkees ‘didn’t get a chance to penetrate the mold’, Cynthia explained that Tork's cast comes up rather, er, short. As did Wayne Kramer from MC5: he encountered a premature plaster mix which, as Cynthia put it in the Chicago Reader in 2002, ‘set before he could push his dick all the way into the mold – only the head got in’.
In this way, Cynthia’s art became a challenge, a knowing dare that might expose a certain male vulnerability. ‘I was shocked and delighted to find that they were as insecure as I was,’ she had said of her subjects.
But Cynthia wouldn’t just cast anybody – not even Kiss, who wrote their 1977 song Plaster Caster about her. Sometimes, she would immortalize the musicians she slept with and get to ‘take home the world’s best groupie souvenir,’ she once said – but only if she loved their music. In this way, she could be viewed as a tastemaker, especially at a time when women had little other agency in a male-dominated music industry. By all accounts, she considered her casts a lasting monument to the art of others.
Zappa was among their biggest champions and wanted to give the Plaster Casters of Chicago their first exhibition. But a show never materialized.
Frank Zappa & Herb Cohen
In 1971, after Cathy's apartment was burgled, Zappa and Cathy decided the casts should be preserved for a future exhibition, entrusting them to Zappa's legal partner, Herb Cohen, for safekeeping.
The exhibition idea did not take off however due to a sudden lack of rock stars willing to participate. She made no casts between 1971 and 1980.
After years of wrangling, Albritton found herself in 1993 having to go to court in order to retrieve the 25 casts Cohen held (she got all but three of them back).
“What’s going on here isn’t just a fight over art,” said Cynthia in 1993 as the suit was going to trial. ‘It’s more like a child custody battle. These things aren’t just pieces of plaster to me — they’re like my children. Each one holds precious memories for me.’
In 2000, Cynthia finally held her first exhibition of the casts in New York City.
In 2001, a film documentary, Plaster Caster, was made about her.
Shortly before her death, Cynthia donated a copy of her 1968 plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix's erect penis to the Icelandic Phallological Museum.
“A hundred years from now when people look back on the ’60s, Cynthia will be remembered as an important pop artist.”
Cathy Dorothy Albritton died from cerebrovascular disease at a care facility in Chicago on April 21, 2022, aged 74.
Following Cathy's death in April 2022, long-time friends Babette Novak and Chris Kellner contacted the Kinsey Institute regarding her collection.
“Cynthia wanted people to know who she was and what her role in music history was, rock and roll musical history, especially,” Novak said. “We know the Kinsey Institute can provide the attention and sincere representation of Cynthia’s vast talent and life mission.”
Kinsey Institute Announces
Cynthia Plaster Caster Collection
The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University has acquired an historic collection of artwork, memorabilia and personal effects from renowned artist Cynthia Albritton, also known as Cynthia Plaster Caster.
Bronze penis casts from the
Cynthia Plaster Caster Collection
The new collection at the Kinsey Institute includes many of these famous plaster penis molds, bronze penis casts, breast casts, and a plethora of original drawings, prints, notes, and annotated books. Additional items in the collection offer a fascinating glimpse of Cynthia’s artistic process. Her many diaries include meticulous notes she took of each casting session and document her commitment to continually evolving and improving the composition of her casting materials and her molding technique.
“What I see in Cynthia’s work is twofold: this amazing respect she had for the musicians and the way that she honors them with her art and her craft,” said Melanie Cooper Pennington, a lecturer in sculpture in the IU Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design and affiliate faculty of the Kinsey Institute. “She did it in a very unorthodox and original way — how cool is that? No one else had the bravery to memorialize someone this way.”
NEW IN NOVEMBER
COMPACT DISCS
BUMPER STICKERS
PINS
PICTURES OF ARTISTS
& MORE!