cynthia plaster caster collection photos with names

She later met Frank Zappa, who did not participate in the artwork but did like the concept, as noted in a 1969 interview with Rolling Stone. 25, 1968 she cast her first famous musician’s penis: Jimi Hendrix. “She wouldn’t even sell to people that she didn’t like, even if she needed the money.”īorn on in Chicago, she began her art career in college when her art professor assigned a project involving plaster casts. “She would never cast somebody for commission just because they wanted it,” he tells Rolling Stone. When it came to her artistic integrity, Albritton’s friend and former manager Mitch Marlow says she wanted to keep things pure and true and was concerned about “never selling out” even when she was late on rent. And all the recording of the casts, if you ever see the pictures of her diaries, they’re beautiful: They’re all drawings and then descriptions of how she did the cast and the numbering and everything else. “And she called the casts ‘her babies’ and she had all this like language that went along with it all. “She was a working class woman and she just created this thing - she’s a conceptual artist and she lived her life about this… this was her art,” Timms says. “And she was a lifelong music fan and huge supporter of musicians.” “She was our charming, witty, eccentric friend, but her artistry was serious,” Langford, who is also a renown visual artist, says of her “brilliant” conceptual art. Albritton later cast Langford and Mekons’ Sally Timms. Jon Langford of the Mekons tells Rolling Stone he met Albritton the first night he ever came to Chicago in 1985 to play with another of his bands, the Three Johns, and they became instant friends. If you were lucky enough to meet her out and about, typically at a music venue in Chicago, she simply introduced herself as Cynthia, called everyone “doll,” and was as sweet as she was funny. Her work spanned artists in other realms, including film.įor those that knew Albritton, she was beloved both as an artist and for her unwavering devotion to music. She went on to document a range of musicians from different genres and eras, including Dennis Thompson and Wayne Kramer of MC5, Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, as well the breasts of Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, Peaches, and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Albritton’s first famous cast was Jimi Hendrix. What began as a college art project that fulfilled her “groupie” love for music became a decades-long work. Cynthia Albritton, also known as the legendary Cynthia Plaster Caster - the alias that sprung from her plaster casts of famous musician and artists’ body parts, mainly erect penises and women’s breasts - died on Thursday from cerebral vascular disease and added complications with neuropathy, her power of attorney for healthcare and longtime friend, Chris Kellner, confirmed to Rolling Stone.

Cynthia plaster caster collection photos with names