Cynthia Plaster Caster

In 2000, she began casting female artists' breasts.

Albritton was born in Chicago. In the late 1960s, she became active in the free love and rock music subcultures. Albritton studied at the University of Illinois Chicago. In college, when her art teacher gave the class an assignment to "plaster cast something solid", she had the idea to create a lifecast of an erect penis, which would then become flaccid and exit the mold. She created molds using alginate. She stated that her hobby of casting penises began as a "shtick to get laid" but she soon began to enjoy the aspect of collecting, and she began to see it as art. She had cast a few non-celebrities before casting Jimi Hendrix as her first celebrity cast. Frank Zappa found the concept of her casts both humorous and creative, though he had no interest in having his own penis cast. Zappa became a patron of Albritton and moved her to Los Angeles. In 1971, after her apartment was burgled, Zappa and Albritton entrusted her casts to Herb Cohen for safekeeping. Albritton sought to create an art exhibition of her casts, but did not have enough participants. She made no new casts between 1971 and 1980. In 1993, Albritton filed a lawsuit against Cohen because he would not return the casts that she had given him for safekeeping; she later got all but three back. In 2000, Albritton exhibited the casts for the first time in New York City. She also decided to begin casting women's breasts that year. By 2014, she had cast over 70 penises. In 2009, Albritton won the Rob Pruitt Award at the first annual Guggenheim Art Awards, held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She was a candidate for mayor of Chicago in the 2011 election on the "Hard Party" ticket. Albritton died from cerebrovascular disease at a care facility in Chicago on April 21, 2022, at the age of 74. Shortly before her death, Albritton donated one of her casts of Jimi Hendrix's erect penis to the Icelandic Phallological Museum in Reykjavík. In 2023, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University acquired a collection of her works, including casts, drawings, prints, diaries, and the suitcase she used to transport casting materials and tools.

Source: