This thesis is about the evolution of my work during graduate school, which is pretty easy to sum up. I started out by making sculptures of sharks and pirates and stuff. The work was not about the subjects themselves, it was about the use of them as the subject matter for art. I became interested in materials. I made sculptures out of Duck Tape because I liked what the little pieces of tape did for the work. I later felt like I needed to find a way of legitimizing the unsophisticated elements of my work, and I found it in using historical art references. I went to Rome and saw lots of amazing statues, which inspired me to quote directly from what I saw. I ended my time in graduate school by making representational, life-size figurative sculptures out of polystyrene insulation foam board and masking tape (they are more exciting than they sound). I end the thesis by explaining that I have always considered everything to have the potential to be useful in art making.