Featuring Des Barres, Peters, Frka and other groupies, it helped establish Albritton's brand.īefore taking a hiatus in 1971, Albritton had successfully cast members of the Kinks, Foghat, Argent, the Beach Boys, Iron Butterfly and the Lovin' Spoonful, among others. In 1969, Albritton's voice was featured on "Miss Pamela's First Conversation With the Plaster Casters of Chicago," a track from "Permanent Damage," the debut album by all-female experimental rock band the GTOs. waited for me to pull out one pube at a time." When some of Hendrix's pubic hairs "got stuck in the mold," she continued, "he didn't freak out at all. "He was a casting dream," she told Salon in 2000. A week later she successfully cast Jimi Hendrix in a hotel after a concert in Chicago. “My teacher asked us to plaster cast something that could retain its shape, and I thought, ‘Why don’t I kill two birds with one stone?’ ”Īfter “preparing” the men, her friend Des Barres wrote in her bestselling memoir “I’m With the Band,” Albritton would “plunge the erect quivering member into a bucket full of slimy white goo called alginate, yank it out the moment it got soft (instantly, I would imagine), pour a mixture of plaster into the gaping hole, and leave it there until it got hard.”Īlbritton's first run of casts occurred during three whirlwind years starting in early 1968, after she practiced on two college friends in preparation for her first attempt at a rock star. (In 2000, she said her religious mother, then 84, still had no idea of her daughter's creative pursuits.) Albritton was studying art at the University of Illinois Chicago when she got an assignment, she told one interviewer. An only child, she seldom discussed her family life and kept her surname private until the mid-1990s. (Bernd Wüstneck / picture alliance via Getty Images)Ĭynthia Albritton was born on May 24, 1947, in Chicago. She prevailed.Ĭynthia Plaster Caster poses with the plaster mold of Jimi Hendrix's penis in July 2015. At the time, she was in a legal battle with music executive and former Frank Zappa manager Herb Cohen over ownership of her plaster penises. “What started out as a way to meet rock bands ended up turning into a Pop Art form,” Albritton told The Times in 1993. Frank Zappa was so impressed by her skills that he funded her brief move from Chicago to Los Angeles. As she accrued penis casts, her sexual drive was eclipsed by her artistic drive. "I would ask this band that I was trying to meet if they could help me with my homework assignment," she told MTV. The artist inspired songs by the likes of KISS ("Plaster Caster"), Jim Croce ("Five Short Minutes") and dance punk band Le Tigre ("Nanny Nanny Boo Boo"). She was soon being profiled alongside other so-called groupies Pamela Des Barres, Judith Peters ("Miss Mercy") and Christine Frka ("Miss Christine") in Rolling Stone.Īlbritton held the first exhibition of her casts in New York in 2000, and was the focus of "Plaster Caster: The Rock & Roll Adventures of a Super-Groupie," a 2001 documentary about her work. 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.
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