The first person an artist goes round and greets (5)
I believe the answer is:
hails
'greets' is the definition.
(hailing is a kind of greeting)
'the first person an artist goes round' is the wordplay.
'the first person an' becomes 'i' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'artist' becomes 'hals' (I've seen this before).
'goes round' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'i' going within 'hals' is 'HAILS'.
'and' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for hails that I've seen before include "Praises" , "Greets" , "Attracts attention by calling to someone" , "pelts" .)