Iris Rollins-Greene

Personal Narrative Commented [1]: Great work so far this quarter, Iris.
First Quarter You've covered "the work" part really well and painted
a good picture of what you've learned so far.
Portfolio
Seems like you could have done more with section two
-- the learning to learn portion.

ENGLISH Next time answer a few more of those prompts more

Throughout this year, my work in pilot will be covering english, art and history fully.
proficiencies. For my english, I am currently studying tarot and its history; and will soon start the
other part of my english work which is studying flower essences, once I am able to link up with a
mentor. The standards I will be addressing in this study are standard 2: expository writing, 3:
expressive writing, and 4: expository research writing.
At first it was somewhat difficult to find a reliable source on information about the history,
but after looking on JSTOR I found a piece of writing that is from The Canadian Journal of
Sociology, titled “A sociology of tarot” by Mike Sosteric. I plan to gather information from multiple
sources to write my own research based piece on the history of tarot, and how the cards and
their meaning has evolved (as well as what has stayed the same). So far I have only annotated
the piece that is mentioned since it is very dense with information about the history of the tarot
cards themselves, and how it started as a card game with no significance to divination. Since I
have been familiar with tarot for the majority of my life, I have found it very interesting to learn
about the historical events that have happened and relate to tarot; for example during the
French revolution, when the feudal system was failing new behaviors were needed to benefit
industrial capitalism. Freemasons would meet in lodges to develop the right skills they would
need to thrive in the middle class, and tarot cards were used as a tool to educate themselves on
the social skills and ethics they would need. Another part of my tarot study is giving myself tarot
readings 3 times a week and record them in a journal as well as reading about the cards I pull
each time. I have been learning about how one is supposed to handle and “season” their own
deck with the book “Tarot: a New Handbook for the Apprentice” by Eileen Connolly as well,
because I bought my own deck of cards to use this year. As I do my readings, I have been
choosing cards I have been consecutively pulling to do more research on their meanings. I feel
though that I should know more about the history of tarot before I can accurately give myself
readings which is why I have been working on creating my research based piece more before I
start learning the cards more intensively.

HISTORY
For history I am studying women’s history in America, the history of feminism and the
wage gap. I am preparing a presentation of different women in each time period, their lives and
the impact they had on the country and society. I also to plan to have a conversation about
feminism during this year in an exhibition for one of my learning goals. I am addressing
economics (e), history (a), culture (e), and civic literacy (b) throughout this study.
To start learning about women throughout history, I started with watching A Midwife's
Tale which a movie that was made from the journal of Martha Ballard, an American midwife in
the 18th century. She wrote in a journal every single day for 26 years, and she was a very hard
working woman who was a midwife in her community. She also would always use organic ways
of healing like herbalism for illnesses, she had also once given her niece fresh cow’s milk when
she got very ill. Her journal also contained evidence of a sexual assault case against a man
named Judge North who was in high government power at the time, because she went to visit
her friend Rebecca foster who explained what Judge North had done to her, she wrote the
event down into her journal. Then, When Martha went to testify against Judge North She went
back to her journal and wrote down everything from that day she went to visit rebecca that she
could remember. Although she did not have a direct impact on the country as a whole, she was
still a woman who gave information about what she as a woman was doing in that time period.
I have also began to research the wage gap, and have found a source on JSTOR that
gives some information about eleven studies that were conducted by the Ford and Rockefeller
Foundations in 1989. I learned that when there are more women crowding in a job category; the
less the median wage is, so men who working in a predominately woman filled job will make
less money compared to if they were to work in a job that was taken predominately by men.
Women do not have the opportunity to potentially make more money working with more men or
women.

ART
I am studying guerilla art, and throughout the year I will be creating my own pieces, one
of which I have already made. I will also be studying very influential guerilla+political artists and
the history of the street art movement and the standards I will be addressing are developing
craft, responding and connecting.
I attended an art presentation in the beginning of the school year at the maple corner
community center called “Backstory” where all of the artist’s work represented a piece of their
past. I really enjoyed the experience of listened to the exhibiting artists speak about their pieces
and what they represented; because all of their art had very intricate meaning to them, as does
guerilla art. Something that I have been doing every week to learn about a new artists is fine art
friday with Amy, where we watch an artist from the show Art 21. The show interviews different
artists around the world and they talk about their process and what their art means, and I will
take notes on the segments and then I will also research the artists afterward if I want to know
more about their work.
The thing that I have been working on the most in this subject is my first piece of guerilla
art, I made a painting representing the female body; and the social standards that are placed
upon the women’s body, keeping many of us from seeing beauty and achieving self love. I
completed the painting in around 3 weeks in sessions, and while I was painting I made many
alterations on how I was going to make it. At first, I wanted to just paint a woman who was
naked, sitting in a position of discomfort alone. After painting the woman and thinking about it
more I realized that I wanted to add more to the piece to show the societal influence making her
feel this way, so I decided to add a figure (representing society/ societal norms) behind her who
has a body of roots, starting to grow into her side that is scanning her body with three pairs of
eyes all pointing at different points of her. I then added two other arms to her left side (the side
with the roots growing into her) to correlate with the three pairs of eyes on the figure. Now, as
the figure is looking at her she moves her hand more to her body, representing the discomfort
from the presence of the figure behind her.
 In the beginning of this school year, I was quite stressed out about work and I had a lot
of anxiety around school and making sure I was completing everything; that stress and anxiety
was just keeping me from my work even more. I had to figure out what methods of working
helped me get things done and what didn’t so I could still be productive without sacrificing my
mental health. I am glad that I am putting extra effort into finding healthy ways to be productive,
because I see myself improving on my strategies for stress and feeling overwhelmed. I think
that i’m more productive and doing more with my time, as well as having less anxiety through it
all now that I found a way that works for me.
I was mostly stressed out when my work schedule was too unplanned, so I plan out my
weeks now in a calendar and disperse my work goals evenly throughout the days. This structure
has worked really well for me; I don’t feel overwhelmed when I do my work anymore because
since I have a designated amount of things to do every day. I know that I don’t need to do more
than that amount of work that day if I don't have enough energy or time, but if I do then I can
complete more work than the designated amount and that gives me more time the rest of the
week to work on other things. I find my use of work time at home to be more productive than at
school, and that is only because I can not focus on work in settings that are too stimulating. I
can work in the pilot room most times but when there is too much going on for me to focus I
usually find another place that’s more secluded to work so I can be more productive. I also find
myself needing more break times in school because my attention span is shorter when I am
working for a long period of time, like being in algebra or chemistry class. I did not really realize
how much more work I can get done at my home compared to school until this year, and I’m not
sure if it is the content I am working on and my interest level or that I have just had the
opportunity to work from home before.
I have learned many things about myself this year. I did not know that I could make the
painting that I made, and I am proud of the piece because it is basically the first and biggest
painting on canvas with acrylics that I have done. I did not know that I could do so much Commented [2]: oh wow! I didn't know this.
independently and be this content and happy with my work, and I only hope to develop more Very good, especially considering that it was your first
go.
independent working skills throughout this year. I have enjoyed being in pilot very much and my
advisors have helped me alot with direction and advice on what to do next.

Bibliography

Art-
Galligan Baldwin, Jason. "Pecha Kucha." Maple Corner Community Center, 26 Sept. 2018, Calais,
Vermont. Speech This was a presentation series of all of the artists who were exhibiting at the Kent
Museum. I went originally to specifically see Jason and hear him talk about his art.

Syjuco, Stephanie, producer. Art 21. 2018.

Hiwa K, producer. Art 21. 2018.
Eliasson, Olafur, producer. Art 21.
Nathalie Djurberg , producer. Art 21. Art 21 is a series of interviews with different artists and they talk
about their work and the process. Every Friday me and Amy watch a clip from art 21

History-
A Midwife's Tale. Directed by Richard P. Rogers, screenplay by Laurie Kahn-Leavitt, 1997 This is the
documentary I watched to learn about Martha Ballard, who is the first woman I am studying throughout this year

Ls. “Women's Wage Gap Studied.” Off Our Backs, vol. 19, no. 6, 1989, pp. 5–5. JSTOR, This is an
article I found about the gender wage gap

English-
Sosteric, Mike. “A Sociology of Tarot.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne De
Littérature Comparée, journals.library.ualberta.ca/cjs/index.php/CJS/article/view/20000. This article has
helped me learn about the history of tarot cards

Connolly, Eileen. Tarot: A New Handbook for the Apprentice. Vol. 1, Career Press, 2008. This is a book
that I have been using to learn about how to handle my tarot deck and what each of the cards represent