CULT HERO: Not so much the Queen of the Silver Dollar as the mistress of the hanging appendage, Cynthia Plaster Caster is a remnant of the, er, swinging Sixties, and a minor celebrity since Rolling Stone magazine ran a feature article on her distinctive gimmick: persuading rock stars to drop their trousers by promising to immortalise their erect penises in plaster.
In a rather touching manner, Cynthia - now becoming more than a cult figure through her regular television interviews and a forthcoming documentary movie Plaster Caster - calls her works of art her "babies". She told Salon magazine recently that all she was trying to say through her work was, "Look at this chorus line of gorgeous penises, left and right and swirling around. Aren't they pretty?" It all started in the decade in which everything went. Rock star culture ruled and liberal attitudes prevailed. Cynthia was always interested in art as self-expression and while the likes of Jimi Hendrix, MC5's Wayne Kramer and Noel Redding might not have provided the role models her mother might have thought ideal, at least they were ready, willing and able to help her out. Cynthia operates today the way she did back in the 1960s: she refuses solicitations, which is very sensible of her. "I've been getting a lot of e-mails from fledgling musicians that want me to come give them an audition," she has said. "I need to find a stock answer for that one, but I don't like it when people approach me." As for accusations from various high-minded quarters that contemporary US rockers (people such as Bill Dolan from a band called Five Style and Dan Kroha from Demolition Doll Rods; and no, we've never heard of them, either) don't have as much kudos as the premier division types - well, Cynthia says she selects musicians whose work she respects and enjoys. That said, the likes of Bono, Michael Stipe, Fred Durst, Michael Jackson, Moby and Eminem are conspicuous by their absence in this particular Members Only club.
While Plaster Caster, the movie (or "cockumentary" as it's known in certain circles), will bring the Cynthia's curious art to the fore, she prefers to be getting on with her latest project, which is casting the breasts of current female rock stars (step forward Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier, who, undoubtedly unwittingly, put the "tit" into her Christian name).
Cynthia has also recently finished a first - a plaster casting of her début couple, singer Bobby Conn and violinist Julie Pomerleau. "I've got his hanging on the wall between her lovely two breasts," she explains. "It's kind of like a Groucho Marx mask." Bless.
