Better known as Cynthia Plaster Caster, Cynthia Albritton made models of the erect penises of celebrities like Jimi Hendrix, Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra, and MC5 bandmembers Dennis Thompson and Wayne Kramer.
Scott Gries/Getty ImagesCynthia Albritton, better known as Cynthia Plaster Caster, made a career out of casting penises in plaster.
When it comes to groupies, there’s no doubt that rock bands have some of the wildest. Some collect autographs, others collect t-shirts, and still more collect locks of hair and used tissues. Then, there’s Cynthia Albritton, better known as Cynthia Plaster Caster.
During the 1960s, Albritton began collecting a different type of keepsake: plaster casts of famous rock stars’ penises.
The first celebrity penis she immortalized in plaster was none other than that of Jimi Hendrix. Over the next several decades, she made more than 70 casts of musicians, tour managers, record producers, and bodyguards. Albritton even slept with some of her clients before casting them, leaving her with “the world’s best groupie souvenir.”
Cynthia Plaster Caster died in 2022, leaving behind one of the most unique legacies in music history. Today, her work can be seen on display around the world, from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University to the Icelandic Phallological Museum.
How A College Assignment Inspired A Unique Art Collection
Cynthia Albritton’s decades-long project first began during an art class at the University of Illinois Chicago. One of Albritton’s teachers challenged the students to make a plaster cast of “something solid that could retain its shape.” Wanting to do something different from her peers, Albritton turned to her love of music for inspiration.
Since she was a child, Albritton had been obsessed with rock music. As a teenager, she became entranced by the “gorgeous men who made this awesome music” she loved, as she wrote on her website. So, she started going to shows and after-parties, just waiting for someone to notice her.
However, Albritton quickly discovered that there was a lot of competition at these after-parties. To her dismay, it turned out that she wasn’t the only young woman trying to make her way back to a rock star’s hotel room. That’s when she decided to find something that would put her ahead of all her competitors.
Cynthia Plaster Caster/FacebookCynthia Albritton and her original casting assistant, Dianne.
The night after she was given her art assignment, Albritton attended a Paul Revere and the Raiders concert. At the after-party, she marched right up to the lead singer and guitarist, and, as she put it, asked if she could “cast their solid somethings.”
Although the band turned her down, she managed to make the impression she’d been hoping for. Word spread in the rock community about the groupie and her unusual art venture, and soon she had a taker.
In 1968, Jimi Hendrix came to Chicago. Albritton had been practicing her casting technique — a simple process that involved dipping a “solid something” into a martini shaker filled with dental-mold gel — on two of her friends. She was ready to cast her first rock star.
How Cynthia Albritton Became Cynthia Plaster Caster
In a 2002 interview, Cynthia Plaster Caster recalled how she came to cast Jimi Hendrix’s penis in plaster:
“My girlfriends and I followed his limo in my friend’s car after the first of two shows they did at the Civic Opera House in Chicago. We arrived just as they did at the Conrad Hilton and we all tumbled mutually out of our respective vehicles and we just stood there looking at Jimi and The Experience very breathlessly saying, ‘We are The Plaster Casters of Chicago and we want to plaster cast your Hampton Wick!’
Hendrix reportedly responded, “Oh, yeah, I heard about you from somebody in the cosmos. Come on up to my room.”
Even decades later, Albritton said that Hendrix was her favorite musician to cast. She recalled that he was laid back, even when his “pubes got stuck in the mold.”
After Hendrix got his cast, the trend took off, and Albritton had men from all over the rock world begging for a cast of their own. Artists like Jello Biafra, Chris Connelly, Wayne Kramer, and Jon Langford all modeled for Cynthia Plaster Caster over the years.
dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock PhotoJimi Hendrix’s penis cast on display in 2015.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though. For instance, as Albritton told the Chicago Reader in 2002, MC5’s Wayne Kramer was met with a premature plaster mix that had, as she put it, “set before he could push his dick all the way into the mold — only the head got in.”
Albritton’s fame only grew when Frank Zappa reached out to her. Though he had no interest in being cast himself, he saw the commercial value in the art and invited Cynthia Plaster Caster to Los Angeles to set up an exhibition.
Unfortunately, the grand display Zappa had hoped for never happened. As it turned out, there was a decline in the number of rock musicians who wanted to make the effort it took to immortalize their penises in plaster if they couldn’t keep the results.
Of course, Albritton also faced resistance from those who found her work offensive.
The Controversy Surrounding Cynthia Plaster Caster’s Art
Mick Hutson/Redferns/Getty ImagesCynthia Albritton making a cast of My Life Story singer Jake Shillingford in 1999.
Albritton was fairly picky about the musicians she would cast. They didn’t all make the cut. As her friend and former manager Mitch Marlow told Rolling Stone in 2022, “She would never cast somebody for commission just because they wanted it. She wouldn’t even sell to people that she didn’t like, even if she needed the money.”
This is why, despite the fact that the band wrote a song about her called “Plaster Caster,” Albritton refused to make casts for KISS.
The plaster’s gettin’ harder
And my love is perfection
A token of my love
For her collection
Still, her commitment to the purity of her art didn’t make everyone see it as art. In the 2001 documentary Plaster Caster, writer Camille Paglia said that feminists of Albritton’s time saw her work and “assumed it was degrading.” A member of Led Zeppelin reportedly tossed her into a pool fully clothed once.
But, as time went on and hindsight developed, a new appreciation for what Cynthia Plaster Caster had done emerged.
Cynthia Plaster Caster’s Death And Legacy
When Albritton’s apartment was robbed in 1971, Zappa decided she should entrust her collection of penis casts to his business partner, Herb Cohen. After Zappa’s death in 1993, however, she had to go to court to get her work back.
Once they were returned to her, Albritton was able to exhibit her masterpieces at a show in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City in 2000, and then again in 2017 at the MoMA PS1 in Queens. She also began casting women’s breasts later in her career.
dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock PhotoCynthia Plaster Caster holding a huge, inflatable penis.
In 2010, Albritton ran for mayor of Chicago as a candidate on what she called the “Hard Party” ticket. She was also the subject of several documentaries and gained widespread recognition for the art she made beyond her casts.
Cynthia Plaster Caster died from cerebrovascular disease at age 74 on April 21, 2022. By the end of it all, she’d made around 70 plaster penises, and she left behind a reputation as one of rock music’s most legendary groupies.
After learning about the life and career of Cynthia Plaster Caster, read about Lori Mattix, the “baby groupie” who slept with some of history’s biggest rock stars. Then, go inside the story of Connie Hamzy, the rock groupie who was Bill Clinton’s first sex scandal.
