Consequence of Sound reports the death.
Albritton had her first exhibition in New York City in 2000. The following year, she was profiled in Jessica Everleth’s documentary Plaster Caster, and in 2005, she contributed to the 2005 BBC 3 documentary My Penis And I. Albritton has inspired and been referenced in a number of songs, including KISS’ “Plaster Caster,” Le Tigre’s “Nanny Nanny Boo Boo,” Jim Croce’s “Five Short Minutes,” and Momus’ “The Penis Song.”
I was just reading about her yesterday. After listening to the new episode of "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" — about "Hey Joe" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience — I found this 2005 London Times article "Hazy days/He arrived as a nobody but immediately had London’s greatest rock stars at his feet. Charles R Cross reveals the wild rise of Jimi Hendrix":
When [The Jimi Hendrix Experience] arrived at the Chicago Hilton [in February 1968], three young women ran up to them excitedly.
"We want to plaster-cast your Hampton Wick," Cynthia Albritton, 20, announced. She thought talking cockney would make her Chicago accent more worldly.
Jimi's response: "Oh, yeah. I heard about you. Come up to the room."...
Cynthia retreated to the bathroom to begin mixing dental plaster while her companions began working on Jimi.... Once he was aroused, they stuck a vase filled with plaster around his penis, and he was told to stay still - and turned on - for one full minute while the plaster dried. ... The room was silent during the moulding.
"It wasn't very sexy, really," Cynthia recalled. "Jimi was one of the first moulds we ever did, and we didn't lubricate his pubes enough. A lot of his pubes got stuck in the plaster, and there was only one way to remove them, which was pull them individually."
Art is difficult. It's not just some party game or device to get close to glamorous celebrities. Albritton's brilliant concept endured, and she belongs in the pantheon of female sculptors.
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38 comments:
Um... No.
The pantheon is reserved for Michelangelo and Rodin, etc., not this. I can't think of a female sculptor who belongs there off the top of my head. I'm sure a Google doodle will tell me someday.
Every time I've tried to get a plaster cast of my penis made the damned thing went off half-cocked.
Yes, brilliant...
She kinda looks like Althouse
“…in the pantheon of female sculptors.”
Low bar, indeed.
Playing with Penises.
Genius. Sure. Right. You betcha.
Men aspire to heights, while pantheons of women settle for penis jokes.
Not exactly Edmonia Lewis, is she?
In a Savanna, Georgia antique store several years ago going through vinyl stacks off old records I spotted the English Tracks album "Are You Experienced?" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. I'd never seen the English version but here it was in pristine VG+ 9 condition with the exception of the original owners name written on the album sleeve (remember how we all did that in the olden days?). Priced at $15 ( ! ). Well somebody had left a zero off that price tag. I walked it to the register, paid for it and took it out the door. Back in the car I mentioned the obviously incorrect price I paid and asked the sig other to Google it. "$150, right?" "No" she replied - "add another 0".
I immediately took the album and had it authenticated by an expert in the field and he told me it was an album from the first pressing in England. I had it framed and it's hanging on the wall.
Addendum: The American version is a better album as a number of his early big hits were not on the English disc. And, Jimi detested the album sleeve and picture.
The genius was in her brilliant gimmick to see famous men naked.
But was she a groupie or just a sculptress/sculptor?
I wonder if I could become famous trying to get a gel mold from the pussy of famous beautiful women? I mean, could I entice, let's say, Rachel Weisz, to come up to my room, and lay naked while I prepare a gel mold to slap over her crotch?
I suspect it would not receive rave reviews, though it certainly seems like a project worth ferreting out. If I can use that expression here.
No aspect of this hoary story has aged well.
She will be remembered for her enormous contributions, firm resolve, and the sheer length and width of her activities. She generated excitement for all.
Someone had to say it.
Enigma, well done! You're truly cock of the walk on this thread.
"The American version is a better album as a number of his early big hits were not on the English disc."
I have the American album, the same copy I've had since I was in college. I graduated in 1973. In 1976 or 1977, my then-husband picked it up, waved it around, and — in the middle of expressing outrage at the general household clutter — proclaimed "You're never going to listen to this again." The message was that the thing was an embarrassing relic of the past and it was time to be rid of childish things.
Her 'innovation' lives on today on certain web sites where you can buy cast versions of various porn performers' members, maybe even autographed for a couple extra dollars. She was a true trailblazer. Or was she just one more woman who achieved her celebrity based on her associations with accomplished men, like Hillary and Harris.
rhhardin is right so much of the time.
It seems likely she was the inspiration for the sex toys made from the molds of porn star genitalia- male and female. Yes, it's a thing. Hope she got royalties but I doubt it.
The info you're exposed to on the Internet.
1. Were Grace Slick and Janis Joplin similarly memorialized?
2. Temujin - don't ever google what you write about, your disappointment will be vast. Porn "stars" made an industry of usable molded body parts for their fans. And of course, the famous cult movie Cherry 2000 was an early predictor of sexbots and their hold on humanity.
Not sure if making a plaster mold counts as "sculpting" - maybe the Professor could do an examination of the etymology of the word?
I bet pulling out those pubes was a downer.
Laughing til I cry.
As portrayed by Flo n’ Eddie in Zappa’s “200 Motels”?
There was a very funny comedy bit about these plaster casters on a record album that DJ Steven Segal (aka “Steven Clean” on L.A.’s KMET “little bit o’heaven, 94.7”) used to play every so often back in the early 70s. May’ve been the Credibility Gap or some other comedy miscreants of the times.
"You're never going to listen to this again." The message was that the thing was an embarrassing relic of the past and it was time to be rid of childish things.
Wow!! I'm not going to die on that hill. The you-have-too-much-shit is an issue in every relationship.
The other side of that coin is the quest for storage space which usually involves some kind of Tupperware.
Not sure how much truth there is to the Hendrix thing.
Sounds like a cock and balls story...
The end of that video when they approached a 23 year old for permission to cast his penis was kind of creepy. He seemed to think so, too. Grandmas aren’t all that erotic for most young men. Poor old women, they did not seem to comprehend that sad truth.
"I wonder if I could become famous trying to get a gel mold from the pussy of famous beautiful women? I mean, could I entice, let's say, Rachel Weisz, to come up to my room, and lay naked while I prepare a gel mold to slap over her crotch?"
There is a project like that out there (not of famous women, though). I think I've blogged about it.
Here: "Meet Jamie McCartney, the Artist Who Wants to Cast Vaginas in Every Country in the World/The British artist also wants a set of vagina casts from each of the 50 states."
Here's my post about it (from last year).
"Meet Jamie McCartney, the Artist Who Wants to Cast Vaginas in Every Country in the World/The British artist also wants a set of vagina casts from each of the 50 states."
That's Art Net using the word "vagina" where they mean "vulva." That's so dumb.
So she made plaster dildos. I read the Sun-Time obit and it doesn't say that she did anything else in the way of sculpture.
She didn't even sculpt the dildo. She made a mold and poured plaster into it. We did that in Cub Scouts in the 50s though with our hands, not our dicks.
I guess the first one that anyone ever did might be art, though more likely it would be pfart.
Maybe even the second one if part of a set.
But doing it for 50 years and making a career of it? Good on her, at least she is working at something. But calling it art is a shameful fraud. Not new. Not original. Not any artistic skill involved.
If she whittled it out of actual wood, at least there would be some skill involved. Not sure it would be "art" in any meaningful sense but I could be wrong.
OTOH, maybe they can have a concession to do these at Disney world. "Hey moms, screw photos of your kids. We will make a casting of your son's or daughter's penis that will be a cherished memento to display in your living room."
John LGKTQ Henry
I was going to mention the sale of replica cunts and dicks of porn actors. Several people beat me to it.
HBO Used to have a show called Real Sex. One of the episodes was about the process of making these.
John LGKTQ Henry
Actually, some of those female sculptors aren't bad. But this Albritton person didn't know dick.
'Her 'innovation' lives on today on certain web sites where you can buy cast versions of various porn performers' members, maybe even autographed for a couple extra dollars.'
Is that why Members Only jackets were so popular?
From cock worship to toxic masculinity.
Warning: making a plaster cast of your uvula or someone else's can be fatal. Somebody might choke or suffocate.
I agree with the earlier comment that the US version of Are You Experienced is better than the UK release. Better cover, too. The music released during Hendrix's lifetime still sounds innovative to me, and there have been few rock guitarists as harmonically sophisticated or as gifted on the instrument as he was.
Each of her 'sculptures' is one more monument to female hypergamy.
Why not do vaginas? You could maybe put a water ballon in there and pump it full of radio dye and do a CT scan of it, after, like with Jimmy, she is aroused and fully tented, and then use one of those three dimensional printers to recreate it from the image. It's art and science!
farmgirl said...
I bet pulling out those pubes was a downer.
Laughing til I cry.
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why not snip them off? they will regrow!
Didn't Liz Taylor star in a movie about race horses called "National Vulva"?
(Or was that about Liz herself...)
mikee said...
1. Were Grace Slick and Janis Joplin similarly memorialized?
**************
My 30-something self would have paid big bucks for Stevie Nicks.
Her fame was blowing musicians, and her "art" was slapping casting materials on their genitals.
She's mainly famous for doing this with Jimmy Hendrix. Talk about reducing a real artist, and a black man in the Sixties, to a mold of his penis. No, there's nothing racist or dehumanizing about that.
What a degraded, pathetic woman. Better forgotten.
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