During the summer of 2016, through a teen arts internship, the author conducted research on some of the contexts, narratives, and activities that shape artist identity formation. The teen arts interns spent mornings engaged in activities such as discussion, writing, and making art, with a focus on art as activism, and spent afternoons as teaching assistants for an arts summer camp for younger children. Many of the internship activities prompted students to reflect on their identities as artists in past, present, and future contexts. In order to highlight the personal narratives of the young artists in this study, the author created narrative portraits of the participants based on interviews and observations of the young artists.