The 74-year-old artist, who died last week, turned the tables on rock musicians with her notorious plaster casts – and complicated the image of the groupie
“She’s like the Michelangelo of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,” Pamela Des Barres once said of her friend and peer in penis admiration, Cynthia Albritton. Better known as Cynthia Plaster Caster, the 74-year-old artist died last week after battling a long illness. She was one of the last living “supergroupies” of the 60s and 70s US music scene, who built a reputation on their famous bonks and tell-all tales. But Albritton went a step further, casting the privates of the musicians she admired and flipping the notion of woman as muse. “She’s the most notorious groupie of all of them because of her art form,” said Des Barres.
Albritton was born in Chicago in 1947 and discovered the power of plaster casting in her art class at the University of Illinois. When her teacher suggested that she could cast anything solid that could “retain its shape”, the shy but mischievous Albritton immediately thought of erect members, which would then conveniently go flaccid and avoid getting stuck in her moulds. She 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 moulds of their own.
