Jody Sjogren

Medical Illustrator and Artist

Jody Sjogren illustrated Dr. Jonathan Wells’s 2000 book Icons of Evolution. She graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology, and then from the Medical College of Georgia with a Master of Science degree in Medical Illustration. For 43 years she ran her own business, Metamorphosis Studios, doing medical illustration, graphic design, aviation art, calligraphy, and floral oil painting. Though much of her artwork has been produced for the medical field, she also enjoys connecting biological avian flight with human-designed flight-machines.

Archives

Artist Jody Sjogren on How Intelligent Agents Bring Ideas to Life

Jody Sjogren
June 25, 2025
How does an intelligent agent go from idea to artifact? What can the process of art teach us about the evidence of design in the natural world? Today, medical illustrator and artist Jody Sjogren joins host Andrew McDiarmid to discuss the similarities between machines and living organisms and the insights art can give us about the mind of intelligent designers. This is Part 2 of a two-part conversation.

Artist Jody Sjogren on Illustrating the Icons of Evolution

Jody Sjogren
June 23, 2025
Artistic license has been used to promote Darwinian evolution since the late nineteenth century. Icons of evolution have appeared in textbooks, journals, magazines, and other visual media to promote a materialist worldview that is light on evidence and weighty on assumption. But in 2000, a book came along – Icons of Evolution – that finally exposed the myths, exaggerations, and outright fakery behind ten of the most infamous icons of Darwin’s theory. Today, host Andrew McDiarmid welcomes the illustrator of that ground-breaking book, medical illustrator and artist Jody Sjogren, to discuss her experience of bringing these famous icons to life and working with author Dr. Jonathan Wells on the project. Jody also shares some of her memories of Dr. Wells, who passed away in …

Icons of Evolution

Science or Myth? Why much of what we teach about evolution is wrong
Jonathan Wells and Jody Sjogren (illustrator)
January 1, 2002
Authored by developmental biologist and Senior Discovery Fellow Jonathan Wells, this book takes aim at 10 common “icons” used to bolster Darwin’s theory in widely used biology textbooks. The “icons” commonly cited to support evolution in textbooks turn out to be scientific urban legends, long-refuted fakes, or misrepresentations of the scientific data. One of the most famous “icons” discussed is the famous drawings of vertebrate embryos, used in many textbooks to claim that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” (that is, the development of an embryo replays its evolutionary history). There’s only one problem with these popular drawings: they were based upon faked data by the 19th century embryologist Ernst Haeckel. The drawings …