Tell Me I’m An Artist by Chelsea Martin
Review of Tell Me I’m an Artist by Chelsea Martin
“If only I could afford therapy. Then I wouldn’t need this art degree.”
Tell Me I’m An Artist by Chelsea Martin (2022). Published by Soft Skull.
I picked this book up on a whim, after seeing it on one of the many literature sites I read. The year end of the lists are coming in with the end of 2022, and this was on one of them.
I wish I could recall which site it was, but, alas, it’s been over a month. I’ve been on a kick when it comes to narratives about art school and creativity, which was spurned after I picked up a copy of Sirens & Muses at my local library.
Surprisingly, no one had checked this book out at my library despite it coming out relatively recently, and I was able to get it at soon as I wanted to read it.
There was this movie that I ended up seeing for work at the New York Film Festival, and the entire time I was reading this book, I was reminded of that movie. The resemblance is almost uncanny, although I don’t doubt neither of them were inspired by the other because the movie hasn’t even been released yet.
The movie’s called Showing Up and it’s distributed by A24, and it’s about a woman in art school also dealing with family issues and creative blocks throughout, as well as an off-and-off friendship with her landlord. I genuinely enjoyed this book though because I like these stories, and the writing was pretty good.
Let’s get into the review!
An art student struggles with her family problems, school, and making a film for class.
The originating premise that this story grounds itself in is simple: Joey is at a San Francisco art school and she has decided to take an experimental film class. She takes this class because of her friend, Suz, telling her she should branch out of just making portraits.
Joey often sticks to painting and the work she is familiar with, especially because in this new class she’s struggling from the very beginning. She decides to make her project based on Wes Anderson’s movie Rushmore, except there’s a catch: Joey has never seen this movie in her life, and she doesn’t plan on watching it over the course of the semester.
However, as the narrative opens up, we learn that there’s more than what meets the eye when it comes to Joey. She was born into a family where it’s basically just her mother, who is also manipulative, paying most of the bills.
In order for Joey to live alone in her apartment, she took out a major loan just so she didn’t have to go home for the summer. Her mother has been taking care of her sister’s child, as her sister struggles with addiction and over the course of the novel refuses to return home, having run away to Nevada.
We learn later in the novel she has been arrested, and Joey must give her mother the remainder of her loan money in order to bail her sister out of prison.
As a young woman and artist, Joey struggles a lot not only with her personal life, but also the art she is making. She makes a lot of portraits of other people, but doesn’t really seem to know what her artistic voice is outside of these portraits. Suz, on the other hand, seems like everything Joey is not.
Her art is praised in class, she comes from a family that helps her out financially, and she can afford to eat out and get fancy ramen. There’s a scene where Suz invites Joey to come to Japantown and get food, and Joey remarks (not aloud) how she can’t afford such luxuries and watches how Suz buys fancy sake for her parents.
There’s a lot of self-sabotage for Joey when it comes to her relationships like Suz. She enters a string of one nighr and somewhat consistent stands with men she knows she’s not interested in, which can be kind of questionable at the end of the day.
When she meets a big gallery owner, making such a great chance for networking, she ends up insulting the girl’s brother and his band, effectively burning that bridge pretty quickly.
Her relationship with Suz also slowly crumbles throughout the course of the novel, partially because of how Joey has a tendency to be awkward and self-sabotage, especially in the dinner scene with Suz’s parents. The relationship is effectively over when it is revealed that Suz never told Joey she got a residency in Chicago.
Scenes from the Rushmore attempt and reenactment are scattered throughout the novel, showing the different sides of Joey. She may not be the most likable character, but she sure makes an entertaining narrator that furthers these themes of self-doubt and the privilege it takes to be active in the art world sometime.
The ending of the novel touches upon this, because while she made a really authentic and experimental piece of art that was true to her and what she plans on doing with her life right now, the class’ reaction is filtered through her lens. She sees them as not liking it, but she seems perfectly okay with that in this moment.
She admits her relationship with Suz is over, but there’s an implication that there could be a chance for reconcile. Distance may be far, but it can be bridged with time if they put effort into it.
Overall Thoughts
I genuinely enjoyed this reading! It was the first five star reading I’ve given in awhile, and I thought that it was a fairly quick read because of the way Martin ended up sectioning her paragraphs and fragments.
It’s not split into traditional chapters, which works really well but also makes the reading process a lot quicker and smoother.
Tell Me I’m an Artist truly is a immersive experience as you are dropped into Joey’s head and are stuck there for the entirety of the novel, seeing everything through a slightly cynical and almost depressed lens. I found this to be a fascinating book at the end of the day, and I may purchase a physical copy for my collection.
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