Iris Rollins-Greene

PILOT NARRATIVE
Semester one
EXHIBITION DATE: 01.11.19
Portfolio
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During the first quarter of being in pilot, I was very motivated to do my work. Not to say
that I am not anymore because I definitely am, But I feel I wasn’t as realistic before with the
stability of my methods. My mindset helped me stay motivated before, but what happens when I
don’t feel as motivated? That is a question I have had to start to answer farther into this year.
Being too artificial with my emotions, in other words suppressing the bad and only letting the
good be expressed was what I was doing to cope with events that had happened in the
beginning of this year; it’s only effective for so long. A lot of time has passed, and the second
quarter went by so much quicker than I thought it would. I learned so much this quarter, and I’m
trying to show the physicality of that more. I have lately done a lot more research, and now i’m
starting to turn that into my own work. I am leaving this quarter with more knowledge about what
I wanted to learn and I don’t want to discount that because of what I wish I had done better.
Something that I did this quarter that did not help me very much was underestimating the
time it would take for me to complete things. I think that giving myself a goal that was shorter
than I thought I could complete was motivating on one hand to push myself, but on the other
gave crippling stress that would put a strain on my productiveness. There needs to be
something to keep me moving like the goal setting but making it too hard on myself was holding
me back. This frustration brought me to a plateau in my working. Everything including me is
constantly evolving, so must the methods I have to work. I was on such a grind in the beginning
of the year, but I started to change. I started to take flower essences, and so many emotional
things came up in my life that I NEEDED to address in order to be healthy and move on. I then
just tried to carry on the same methods that had worked for me in the beginning of the year into
the future but obviously it wasn’t working the same. My overarching goal for the future is to get
back on that grind in a way that works for me now. That means I have to be more realistic in the
sense that trying to push myself too much will only keep me from growing and creating more.
This does not mean I am letting go of any sense of self discipline, just reinventing it in a way
where it actually helps me.
To help myself in the future, I need to get back to being extremely organized with time
and work, because I sort of lost that due to my mental state this quarter. Something that I think
had an impact on me losing organization and motivation was the fact that I stopped writing a
weekly calendar in my journal which I did every week in the first quarter. I have started to do this
again with my classes, meetings and obligations and the times they are at. Then, I am able to
plan out what my goals of work completion are for the week and fill in the spaces in between the
other events. This way I am also able to find time where I can take breaks as well, which is
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equally as important as the time I am working, because I need a balanced flow of working and
not working in order to use my time wisely and productively.
ENGLISH
This quarter, I have started a new english project which is making my own Major Arcana
Tarot cards. I was planning to make one a week, but I have yet been able to reach that goal. It
takes me a lot longer to make them because if I was to leave them the way they are after a
week (at least the ones I have made so far) I am not satisfied with the way they look, they are
not complete. I have completed three cards and created a book to go along with the deck, and I
am adding the meanings of the cards as I go. I am getting the information for the card definitions
from the book “Tarot: A New Handbook For the Apprentice”, by Eileen Connolly. I think that
having the one week per card goal in mind is good to keep me trying to complete them as fast
as I can, but I want to be satisfied with the way they turn out.
I have began to write my paper about the history of tarot, and am part way through the
first draft. It has been especially hard to write more of it because it has been hard to put all of
the research I have into a paper form. A new resource I have been using in this study has been
a documentary titled “21 Faces of God’ created by Robert Bonomo, and have recently been
starting to read a book Meg ordered for me titled “A History of The Occult Tarot” written by
Ronald Decker and Michael Dummett. In the documentary, the evolution of tarot is
different/longer than the previous piece I had read (“The Sociology of Tarot” by Mike Sosteric).
There are correlating information within all of these resources but also some things I learned
had been left out of the first piece I read. In the first resource I annotated, I had learned that the
first divinatory reference to tarot cards was in the 18th century, when the nine-volume “Analyse
et Compare Avec le Monde Moderne” was written by Antoine Court De Gebelin and Jean-
Baptiste Alliette. After watching “21 Faces of God”, I have learned that in Northern Italy there
was a group of people named the Cathars, a Christian Gnostic sect in Northern Italy and
Southern France from the mid 12th century into the late 14th. They were prosecuted by the
church because their beliefs were openly contrary to their catholic theology. Though there is no
“hard” evidence that the Cathars created the Major Arcana of the tarot deck, The cards emerged
in Europe around the same time and place the Cathars were prominent, and it would make
sense for them to preserve their religion in something like a card game. The Cathars beliefs and
the Major arcana are also very dualistic, so they have many correlations in their meaning.`
I also began to take flower essences and learn about them this quarter. My mentor in
this study is an amazing woman named Eve, and we have talked on the phone once and have
been emailing back and forth. We plan to talk again soon, and were unable to for some time
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because of different events that happened in our lives. I am independently learning about them
in The Flower Essence Repertory, and just in the first chapter which is quite long, I have learned
so much ground breaking information. The repertory talks about the human soul and the soul of
flowers, and how a conversation between the quintessence of both us and them is a catalyst for
emotional changes within us. Flower essences do not affect you in a physical or neurochemical
sense, it has to do with the soul. It is soul food. They are a homeopathic medication, which
means the emotional and mental health are taken into account along with the physical aspects
of health. A quote from the repertory that I enjoyed relating to homeopathy and flower essences
is “It’s better to know the person who has the disease, rather than the disease that has the
person.”
While talking with Eve, she helped me find a flower essence blend to take, because my
plan was to both learn about how they work and how they’re made, and then to start taking my
own. I got the “Fear-less” blend made by Flower Essence Services. The flowers in this blend are
Red Clover, Mountain Pride, California Valerian, Oregon Grape, Mimulus, Rock Rose, and
Green Rose. I had expressed to Eve how I have had insane anxiety lately, and how it keeps me
from being able to function and be productive in both my work and my overall existence. She
then recommended this blend to me because of the functions of those flowers and what I was
talking to her about. Just within the first few days of taking the essences about four times a day,
I started to release a lot of thoughts that had been suppressed for so long, some things that I
didn’t even realize were affecting me so much. I needed to feel a lot of pain and sadness in
order to heal and the process is still unfolding to this day, but I have felt myself grow
emotionally. Every once and a while I will set a timer for about 20 minutes and just write about
my emotional state. This is a way Eve told me to reflect on myself while using essences
because in order to grow from them, you need to actively try to change and grow. Taking the
essences is a catalyst to the realizations but it does not happen effortlessly or unintentionally.
Moving on with my studies in English, I am planning on continuing to make the Major
Arcana Tarot cards and keep writing the paper as I learn more about Tarot’s history, and to
proceed with my mentorship with Eve and learn more about flower essences while taking them,
to hopefully then make my own when the snow melts.

History
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For history, I have continued researching influential women, and have progressed with
my study in the wage gap. Last quarter I was researching Martha Ballard, and continued to into
the second half of the semester. I wanted to know more events that had happened in her life,
and the documentary was a very good resource to get to know her as a person but I found a
timeline of events in her life correlating with other events that happened at the same time in
history which helped me learn more about her. Something I learned that I must have missed in
the movie was that she had EIGHT children. The fact that she gave birth to eight children of her
own blows my mind, I could not imagine giving birth that many times and then caring for that
many kids. What’s very sad though is that she had lost three of her children to the Diphtheria
epidemic. Diphtheria was a nose and throat infection that killed many people around that time
period but there is now a vaccine for it. Martha was very amazing in the sense that she
midwived over 800 births, and used only natural plant medicine to soothe her patients. There
was not much conventional medicine when she was a midwife, at least not where she lived, and
the times had changed a lot after she died due to conventional medicine taking over America,
so she really was one of the only women at that time and place who used natural medication
and those exact methods of medicine before the medical world started to evolve.
The next woman I wanted to research/researched is Sacajawea. She was a native
american woman who was born in 1788 into the Agaidika tribe in what is now Ohio. She was
kidnapped around the age of 12 by a group of Hidatsa Native Americans, and was brought to
their village and held captive, in where is now North Dakota. She was sold to a French-
Canadian fur trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, and lived with him as his “wife”. She was
impregnated with her first child less than a year later. While she was pregnant with her first
child, a ship containing men from the Corps of Discovery (a unit of the United States army),
landed by where Sacagawea and Toussaint lived. The two leading men in this group were
named Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The men built “Fort Mandan” around where they
lived and started to look for people to accompany them on their journey exploring America. They
hired Toussaint to be a translator for them, and Sacagawea accompanied them. Lewis and
Clark believed that the group would be perceived as more peaceful by others if they had a
woman with them, and eventually a child. Their journey lasted about two years, and concluded
in St.Louis in 1809. My pre existing knowledge on Sacajawea was only that she travelled with
Lewis and Clark, and I learned so much about her this quarter that really made me question
history in general, like why is she referred to as Toussaint’s wife when in actuality she was his
sex slave sold to him at age 12, after she was kidnapped from her own tribe? I learned more
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about her than I include in here, and the way I am displaying what I have learned about them is
in this presentation I made, and will be adding each woman onto it as I learn about them.
I have spent a lot of time researching the wage gap, and I started off using the book “Are
Women Paid Fairly?” by Jennifer Dorman which I got at the library after asking Meg if she had
any books relating to the wage gap. This book contains different news articles and writing
pieces all by different authors relating to the wage gap, and they are from differing perspectives
as well. I am using the research I collect to make a slideshow about the wage gap, and am
presenting it at a callback to have a conversation with people and educate them about it. When
going into this study, I was looking at it as male vs. female pay, but I came to realize that it is not
just a division of genders that have different pay, race is also a huge impact on people’s wages
as well. If you are a white woman, you get paid more than african american and hispanic men. I
thought that white men got paid the most money out of everyone, but Asian men do. This study
has been very eye opening for me because it is such a big form of discrimination that I thought I
recognized but just realized I did not know much about it at all, and it also made me realize my
privilege more as a white woman in America knowing I still get paid more than a lot of men and
women because I am white.
I plant to continue with the same studies I am doing for history, and would like to
research case studies about pay discrimination and certain laws that keep the wage gap from
closing next.

Art
I decided to make the first painting I created this quarter into a series of paintings, the
first being one of three. The woman will grow bigger than the figure behind her which represents
her insecurities, and will end in her standing with confidence. More so than painting this quarter
I have worked on a piece of writing to elaborate on the meaning of the painting I made in the
beginning of the year, and relating it to myself. I was going to write a poem to read at my
exhibition as a dialogue between the two figures, but I have been more focused on the piece of
writing as of right now. I want to write three different poems one being for each of the pieces of
the series and then read them with Kristina at my next exhibition.
For my new painting, I learned how to and stretched the canvas myself (with Amy
assisting and teaching me how). It was a really good experience because I learned something
completely new that is necessary if you are a painter. We cut the canvas, and had a wooden
frame for the structure. Then, we laid the canvas down and placed the frame over it. You then
have to pull very hard on one end of the canvas, pulling it over the edge of the frame while
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keeping the opposite one in place, and then staple the canvas around the frame. You staple the
sides first, and then fold the corners over and staple them last. After the canvas was stretched
and stapled, I decided to apply gesso as well even though it is optional because I wanted the
background to be white. I applied three layers of it, sanding the canvas in between adding each
layer. I created a sketch in my journal to plan out my next painting and have started to add the
sketch onto the canvas. The proportions are quite hard to get right and the placement of the
figures. In the last painting, I think that her feet and hands are very small and wanted to make
them more proportional this time. I am being more mindful of the sketch so it is taking longer
than the last one did, not to mention the size of this canvas is much bigger than the last one.
I have made a stencil as well this quarter. It is from a sketch that I made after I heard
about the murder of EJ Bradford, who was an innocent man, shot and killed in a mall in
Alabama by police officers. It does not just symbolize Ej, but the huge amount of police brutality
and racial profiling that happens within law enforcement and the distress it causes for many
lives.
I am continuing to work on my painting and my goal for the next quarter is to have my
second painting finished and to have a poem for each of them to read at my exhibition. I also
would like to start making more stencils because I enjoyed making the first one. I have been
thinking a lot about the politics of the art world and how capitalized it is, and spreading
awareness about that and spreading free art is a big idea of mine.

I am very motivated to progress with my studies. Though I wish I had done more
physical work like finishing more of my Tarot cards and writing more of my paper, it is all a
process that can’t be rushed without dissatisfaction. A caterpillar can not rush the process of
metamorphosis, hence I can not rush the research process of my work. One thing I can do to
help myself more is to become more organized, which I am actively working on now. I definitely
fell into a messy state this quarter hence the emotional changes and was a bit more dissociative
than I usually am. Remembering to constantly maintain working methods is something I know
now to be very important and key in succeeding in independent work.

Bibliography
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English-
For Tarot-
-Connolly, Eileen. Tarot: A New Handbook for the Apprentice. Vol. 1, Career
Press, 2008.
-Decker, Ronald, and Michael Dummett. A History of the Occult Tarot. Duckworth
Overlook, 2002.
-Hughes, Matt. Ethereal Visions Illuminated Tarot Deck. U S Games Systems, pp.
1-128.
-Sosteric, Mike. "A Sociology of Tarot." The Canadian Journal of Sociology, vol.
39, 2014, pp. 358-92.
-The 21 Faces of God. Produced by Robert Bonomo, 2018.
Flower Essences-
-Kaminski, Patricia, and Richard Katz. Flower Essence Repertory. Special Revised
ed., Flower Essence Society, 2015.
-DesJardins, Eve. Telephone interview.
History -
Research on the wage gap-
-Dorman, Jennifer. Are Women Paid Fairly? Farmington Hills, Greenhaven Press,
2013.
-Hegewisch, Ariane, et al. "The Gender Wage Gap: 2017 Earnings Differences by Race and Ethnicity." Institute for
Women's Policy Research, 7 Mar. 2018, iwpr.org/publications/gender-wage-gap-2017-race-ethnicity/. Accessed 10
Jan. 2019.
-"The Equal Pay Act of 1963." U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/epa.cfm. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.
Sources I used to learn about Martha Ballard-
-Lienhard, John. "Martha Ballard, Midwife." Engines of Our Ingenuity, John
Lienhard, 1998, www.uh.edu/engines/epi1035.htm. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.
-DoHistory. 2000, dohistory.org/timeline/frameset2.html. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.
Sources I used to learn about Sacajawea-
-Biography.com Editors. "Sacagawea Biography." The Biography.com Website, A&E Television Networks, 27 Feb.
2018, www.biography.com/people/sacagawea-9468731. Accessed 10 Jan. 2019.
-The true story of Sacajawea - Karen Mensing. Narrated by Karen Mensing, TED-ed,
2013.
Art-
-Kaz, Donna "Aphra Behn". "Push/Pushback: Nine Steps to Make a Difference with
Art and Activism." Fleming Museum of Art, 30 Oct. 2018, University Of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. Lecture.