![]() ![]() The Kinsey Institute is also grateful for a financial gift from Desert Harvest to support the processing and digitization of the Cynthia Plaster Caster Collection. Knowing that we are charged with preserving her legacy for decades to come is such an honor to all of us at the Institute and to me personally.” “I knew about Cynthia from the time I was a teenager - I went to art school in Chicago and she was already an incredibly well-respected and adored artist and music lover. “We are so thrilled to be the permanent home of Cynthia’s life’s work,” said Rebecca Fasman, Kinsey Institute Curator. Her notebooks include entries about the locations she visited, and her observations, sketches, and portraits of some of the musicians and people she met. Cynthia preserved her tickets to music shows from the 1960s and the 1970s with legendary performers like the Beatles, the Kinks, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and Jimi Hendrix. The Plaster Caster collection includes Cynthia’s “Plaster Casters of Chicago” suitcase – which served as both portable storage for her casting tools and as a highly-visible calling card that she used to attract the attention of musicians and their entourages - as well as a host of additional music memorabilia that paints a picture of the vibrant early world of rockers and groupies. This is about contextualizing things so her archives can be looked at and researched in the future by scholars." That’s something we were passionate about. “They have an archive that is accessible to people. “The Kinsey Institute is a teaching institution,” Kellner added. “We know the Kinsey Institute can provide the attention and sincere representation of Cynthia’s vast talent and life mission.” “Cynthia wanted people to know who she was and what her role in music history was, rock and roll musical history, especially,” Novak said. “She did it in a very unorthodox and original way - how cool is that? No one else had the bravery to memorialize someone this way.”įollowing her death in April 2022, long-time friends Babette Novak and Chris Kellner contacted the Kinsey Institute regarding her collection. “What I see in Cynthia’s work is twofold: this amazing respect she had for the musicians and the way that she honors them with her art and her craft,” said Melanie Cooper Pennington, a lecturer in sculpture in the IU Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design and affiliate faculty of the Kinsey Institute. Her many diaries include meticulous notes she took of each casting session and document her commitment to continually evolving and improving the composition of her casting materials and her molding technique. Additional items in the collection offer a fascinating glimpse of Cynthia’s artistic process. The new collection at the Kinsey Institute includes many of these famous plaster penis molds, bronze penis casts, breast casts, and a plethora of original drawings, prints, notes, and annotated books. In 2000, she began casting female musicians’ breasts including Suzi Gardner of L7, singer Peaches, and Karen O. Many of these plaster molds were also cast in bronze. From 1968 through 2014, she cast over 70 phalluses of mostly rock and punk musicians, tour and road managers, actors, and artists, including Jimi Hendrix, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, actor and singer Anthony Newley, and “Ivan” of the Flying Karamazov Brothers. The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University has acquired an historic collection of artwork, memorabilia and personal effects from renowned artist Cynthia Albritton, also known as Cynthia Plaster Caster.Ĭynthia Plaster Caster became famous for creating plaster casts of musicians’ erect penises. ![]()
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