Catch Me a Planet

Sue Fuller

Atelier 17 printmaker Sue Fuller was born to an engineer father and a homemaker mother who worked in crochet and knit. Both parents instilled a love of art in their daughter from an early age, and she pursued a formal education at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Fuller first worked with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in 1943, learning experimental techniques in abstract intaglio printmaking after having already established a career as a printmaker and three-dimensional artist. She excelled in these new approaches to the plate, finding inspiration in the ability to manipulate the surface of something that appears otherwise immovable.

“Catch Me a Planet,” created in 1952, is a wonderful example of the possibilities of softground technique, with a central component that exhibits a woven texture expertly pulled into a cylindrical form - a precursor to the crocheted abstract sculptures for which she would later become known. “Catch Me a Planet,” while created in the early 1950s, wasn’t editioned until 1985. This may have been in part because Fuller, as with many artists, viewed the work as pure experiment when she began working on it in 1952, perhaps not something she was prepared to label as “complete”. Yet this vibrant composition, balanced, galaxy-like and full of energy, is truly a complete work unto itself. As well, it stands as a testament to the important contribution of women in 1940s and ‘50s to American Abstract Expressionism.