Post by xeno on May 7, 2022 7:40:18 GMT
(NSFW warning for the following content!)
Cynthia "Plaster Caster" Albritton, a subversive artist and perhaps the most iconic "supergroupie" in the history of rock music, passed away at the age of 74 last month. She was known for making plaster molds of various rock stars' erect penises and, in the 21st century, breasts. I found out about her work via the KISS song "Plaster Caster" years ago, and in the past year or two in particular upon reflecting on her creations, I've been a pretty big fan. From a comedy/novelty perspective, she's just a very fun, quirky footnote in the annals of rock history and really speaks to the sentiment of a certain era, yet I also love her work from the perspective of, in the often male-dominated world of rock, finding a way to take her sexuality and artistic impulses, quite literally, into her own hands. I think there's something actually kind of profound about her doing something so distinctive, derided by so many, because it brought her joy, and something that started as a joke with her and some college friends getting so much international attention. Truly a unique figure.
I just found out recently that she passed and am pretty bummed about it. I had wanted to reach out to her a year or two ago to see if she'd be willing to chat, and never did.
But, as to the direct topic of this thread: her website, which could formerly be found at cynthiaplastercaster.com/ (it also had a /index.html page), is now down -- not sure what that link would go to now, I think just a domain registration site but I think it also randomly directed me to some page about Apple TVs, so, you know, tread lightly in clicking it -- but it's no longer her site, at any rate.
The site itself was all done with Flash if I recall correctly, so I don't know if they took it down when she passed or, more likely, if it was simply taken down when Flash went down. But it was a delightfully goofy little page where the menu buttons were all phalluses that extended as you moused over them with comical sound effects, and, if I recall correctly, a little cartoon graphic of Cynthia herself riding around in outer space on a rocket shaped like... well, you can guess. From a lot of perspectives, it might fairly be seen as juvenile, but personally I love what she did from an artistic, novelty, and music history perspective, and I think her website had a quirky charm that was perfectly befitting Ms. Albritton's famous work... I mean, what else would you want her website to be if NOT a bunch of phalluses? It was exactly what I hoped it would be when I first went to it, lol.
I put it into the Wayback Machine, thinking that the site (which is referenced in some articles about her from the early 00s) surely had enough traffic to get captured on there... but it didn't. From Googling, I haven't even been able to find a screenshot. Is there any hope for someone still having an archive or screenshot of this anywhere? Any other sources for this sort of thing besides the Wayback Machine? Any big archive(s) of Flash sites that might contain it? Would be a bummer to have it be lost to time.
And RIP to Cynthia Albritton.
---
edit: Oh, this is strange. Going directly through archive.org, I pasted in the URL to the site and typed it out and it told me multiple times that it didn't grab any results. But I just tried again through a third-party site that links to Wayback Machine results, and for some reason (maybe the Wayback Machine was having a server error earlier??), this time it worked! web.archive.org/web/20170926015929/http://cynthiaplastercaster.com/
I don't know why it didn't before as I certainly tried archive.org multiple times before posting this.
Well, now that I have that, I just need to figure out how to use Flash on old archive.org pages if that's a thing one can do, I suppose. I guess I could just delete this thread as I just posted it, but since it's also memorializing someone who just passed and maybe someone else will have the same Archive.org issue I did, I will leave it up for now.
Cynthia "Plaster Caster" Albritton, a subversive artist and perhaps the most iconic "supergroupie" in the history of rock music, passed away at the age of 74 last month. She was known for making plaster molds of various rock stars' erect penises and, in the 21st century, breasts. I found out about her work via the KISS song "Plaster Caster" years ago, and in the past year or two in particular upon reflecting on her creations, I've been a pretty big fan. From a comedy/novelty perspective, she's just a very fun, quirky footnote in the annals of rock history and really speaks to the sentiment of a certain era, yet I also love her work from the perspective of, in the often male-dominated world of rock, finding a way to take her sexuality and artistic impulses, quite literally, into her own hands. I think there's something actually kind of profound about her doing something so distinctive, derided by so many, because it brought her joy, and something that started as a joke with her and some college friends getting so much international attention. Truly a unique figure.
I just found out recently that she passed and am pretty bummed about it. I had wanted to reach out to her a year or two ago to see if she'd be willing to chat, and never did.
But, as to the direct topic of this thread: her website, which could formerly be found at cynthiaplastercaster.com/ (it also had a /index.html page), is now down -- not sure what that link would go to now, I think just a domain registration site but I think it also randomly directed me to some page about Apple TVs, so, you know, tread lightly in clicking it -- but it's no longer her site, at any rate.
The site itself was all done with Flash if I recall correctly, so I don't know if they took it down when she passed or, more likely, if it was simply taken down when Flash went down. But it was a delightfully goofy little page where the menu buttons were all phalluses that extended as you moused over them with comical sound effects, and, if I recall correctly, a little cartoon graphic of Cynthia herself riding around in outer space on a rocket shaped like... well, you can guess. From a lot of perspectives, it might fairly be seen as juvenile, but personally I love what she did from an artistic, novelty, and music history perspective, and I think her website had a quirky charm that was perfectly befitting Ms. Albritton's famous work... I mean, what else would you want her website to be if NOT a bunch of phalluses? It was exactly what I hoped it would be when I first went to it, lol.
I put it into the Wayback Machine, thinking that the site (which is referenced in some articles about her from the early 00s) surely had enough traffic to get captured on there... but it didn't. From Googling, I haven't even been able to find a screenshot. Is there any hope for someone still having an archive or screenshot of this anywhere? Any other sources for this sort of thing besides the Wayback Machine? Any big archive(s) of Flash sites that might contain it? Would be a bummer to have it be lost to time.
And RIP to Cynthia Albritton.
---
edit: Oh, this is strange. Going directly through archive.org, I pasted in the URL to the site and typed it out and it told me multiple times that it didn't grab any results. But I just tried again through a third-party site that links to Wayback Machine results, and for some reason (maybe the Wayback Machine was having a server error earlier??), this time it worked! web.archive.org/web/20170926015929/http://cynthiaplastercaster.com/
I don't know why it didn't before as I certainly tried archive.org multiple times before posting this.
Well, now that I have that, I just need to figure out how to use Flash on old archive.org pages if that's a thing one can do, I suppose. I guess I could just delete this thread as I just posted it, but since it's also memorializing someone who just passed and maybe someone else will have the same Archive.org issue I did, I will leave it up for now.
