Apocalyptic Visions is my Senior BA thesis work. Presented in Transylvania University's Morlan Gallery.

Disparate images combine with assemblage into my own church, for I have received a Revelation. In my dreams and every waking moment from when I first gained consciousness I have been obsessed with my own vanity and self-preservation, a need to fashion my own beauty and self-image out of an apocalyptic landscape that seeked to define my life not on my own terms. This is all I have, and I am a representation of all I have built.
	This devotional manifests as a breaking of my own apocalyptic vision of a prescribed future, one given to me not of my own will. I have harnessed this devotion through my own construction of a church triptych. Built as devotional altarpieces, the triptychs I turned towards for inspiration collaged several panels depicting biblical figures and scenes in order to convey the power of the church to a largely illiterate public during the Middle Ages across Europe. When viewing a triptych, a follower can engage in an act of prayer, a connection with the painted world before them. My triptych is secular, charged with my own memories where instead of prayer one can both see my journey and find community with the collective power of the other. Triptychs exist as pieces of art, concentrating images to transcend language and allow one to concentrate their will onto a higher power. 
	However, that higher power for me manifests as myself. This project, this triptych, represents my devotion to myself and the vanity I allow myself to have after years of giving myself nothing. Growing up Catholic and trans in Shelbyville, Kentucky, I feel this inextricable link to religion, a part of my life I can’t escape from. While I am now not religious in an organized sense, the link to God and guilt, the numinous feeling of awe and fear I gain when I think about my eternal future is always there. In childhood I was confronted with this pervasive fear that my body, my own flesh, was not truly my own but one that was given a predetermined future. To account for this, I would externalize my identity through ephemera and collecting. I sought solace in my own collections and those of my family. I would hide among my father’s barrage of Warhammer 40k and Dungeons & Dragons figurines, watching armor-clad sisters of battle with machine guns and eldritch wizards crawl through dungeons fighting all manner of monsters and demons. I spent summers and afternoons stitching and sewing tapestries and pillows out of my grandmother’s inherited library of textiles from all of the women in my family, taking a button home if I liked the color and texture. I would sit and scream with my mother at all manner of horror movies, finding my identity among the camp counselors drenched in blood hiding among the barns. I crafted rich fantasy worlds with my sister, spending hours watching all manner of TV shows from Survivor to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, playing collaborative games on our 3DS’s all the while. I hold those memories of creating our towns on Animal Crossing: New Leaf so dearly. These pieces of media existed as my own triptychs, allowing me to focus my will and learn about who I was and who I wanted to be at a time when I did not yet know that I could forge my own future.
	Now I live among the remnants of that desperate yet tender past in my room, a barrage of posters and references to media and influences I hold dear. Both my home bedroom and dorm contain boxes of legos, Pokémon cards, figurines from a variety of blind boxes, collections of crystals, suitcases of keychains, and everything I could compartmentalize and keep with me. But now that I am faced with even more uncertainty, my own execution by way of a college graduation, I am once again tasked with finding the will within myself to strive for my own future.
	Taking notes and inspiration from the Art Nouveau, Surrealism, Color Field, Symbolist, and Landscape movements, I have built and cemented my own cathedral. All three pieces had something to say, and together they communicate with each other through symbol, color, and composition. They spoke through me as I drew, leaving the meaning of these pieces partially hidden but highly personal. This is a dedication to myself, to all the Morgans that could be.
 I have glimpsed the future if this were to never pass, a world I came into confused and one that I will leave, never allowing myself to truly live. This was the prophecy the oracle gave me, the one I was told God prescribed for me but one that I have never agreed with. I have seen my own apocalypse, and I am determined to change it.