Anne Elliott

A struggling performance artist becomes an office temp, loses his girlfriend, and spends a crazy evening with his temp boss and his hugely successful art school roommate of fifteen years ago as they watch an amazing performance by his ex and his best friend and then…

I want to say something more profound than “this is a great story.”

Anne Elliot I think has done what a writer is supposed to do. She delivers us to a world that most of us (well at least folks like me) don’t know much (anything?) about, but makes it feel real and honest and true.

This is a great story. Buy it. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

… (meer)

ARTSTARS is a collection of nine stories that in some direct or indirect or oblique manner feature artists.

The stories are spare and clean and beautifully written. Anne Elliott does a masterful job of conveying the technical aspects of a wide-range of artistic specialties (photography, fiber art, painting, writing) and the emotional and intellectual challenge of creating art.

The depth and breadth of these stories of struggling artists is impressive. The writer clearly knows what she is writing about, whether it is developing a photograph in an unheated flat, creating a felt sculpture from schoolgirl memorabilia, or trying to survive a writer’s workshop with a no-talent know-it-all.

Anyone who has ever gone to an art fair will appreciate these stories. We walk through the aisles and see booth after booth of creative work. For 99.99% of artists, it is a struggle to make their way in the world – to create art and still pay the bills. In this collection we get a look behind the scenes at the men and women who are pursuing the life of the artists.

In “Light Streaming from a Horse’s Ass” (how can anyone resist a story with a title like that) we hear from Maddy, an aspiring photographer living in a subdivided, unheated, sublease, who does portrait headshots for equally struggling actors to earn money to support her creative efforts. It sounds grim but the author conveys a ragtag community including trapeze artists, painters, actors and sculptures who in their own way support each other as they try to live the life of an artist. They are Artstars.

In “Three Lessons in Firesurfing” we get an inside look at the gut-wrenching workshop critique. Here we are introduced to Sara, a fiber artist who trying to find her way in a freewheeling art school.

In “Down the Slope” we meet Sara’s sister, Rebecca, a writer trying to regain her confidence and find a new story to write after her novel is rejected.

Later in the collection in the story, “The Stone Floor,” we meet Sara and Rebecca again on an ill-fated vacation in Paris, where Rebecca’s unhinged depression leads to danger for herself and heartbreak for her sister.

The stories aren’t linked but they are loosely connected and seeing characters pop up in different stories and having a chance to see them from a different perspective was neat.

Highly recommended.… (meer)