Cynthia Albritton, the artist who ensured that future generations will know exactly what Jimi Hendrix’s junk looked like, has passed away.
Deadline is reporting that Albritton, better known as ‘Cynthia Plaster Caster’, who made her name with her plaster casts of the genitals of famous musicians, passed at age 74 of a long illness.
Albritton spent more than fifty years working on her collection which (according to her Wikipedia page) encompassed 78 men and 11 women at the time of her death. After a few experiments on (presumably very brave) friends, she moved on to casting Hendrix in 1968. This gained her some fame and the attention of Frank Zappa, who became something of a patron to her.
She continued her work right into 2022, with her final cast being that of Matteo Canfora on February 2, who is described as a “craftsman, entrepreneur, proletarian, set assistant.”
Albritton’s career was the subject of 2001 documentary Plaster Caster and she also appeared in the 2005 BBC documentary My Penis and I, about male anxiety over penis size. She also inspired a lot of musicians with her work — Kiss wrote the song “Plaster Caster” about her (“The plaster’s gettin’ harder and my love is perfection/A token of my love for her collection”), Jim Croce’s “Five Short Minutes” talks about Albritton, and she’s mentioned in Le Tigre’s “Nanny Nanny Boom Boom.”
Here’s hoping that her legacy will continue to be recognized with a posthumous exhibition of her works, as the last time her casts were on display was way back in 2000 in New York.