Olivia Sharpe's Design, Arts and Technology Capstone Research

Reimagining Arachne and Daphne      This week, my research focused on the Metamorphoses by Ovid, which features the stories of Arachne and Daphne. These stories are traditionally framed as tragedies of flight (Daphne) or pride (Arachne). However, a deeper look into the text and contemporary feminist critiques offers a much more empowering direction.      In the standard telling, Daphne's transformation into a laurel tree is a desperate act to escape Apollo's pursuit. By researching ecological art and nymph aesthetics, I've found a different path. The main source of inspiration is the artist James Browne. Browne's philosophy is about creating a "positive and dreamy world" focused on the organic and supernatural (Browne, The World of James Browne ).      My illustration shows her not losing her humanity, but attuning to nature. Instead of a terrified girl being overtaken by bark, Daphne is a figure coexisting with her environment. By foll...

Reimagining Medusa For centuries, art has portrayed Medusa as the ultimate symbol of monstrous evil. She is the snake-haired Gorgon whose gaze turns men to stone. She is meant to evoke terror, disgust, and even a necessity for patriarchal violence. She is rarely seen as a woman. Instead, she is a creature to be slain. When we take a closer look at her mythology, we see that Medusa is possibly the most tragic and misunderstood figure in Greek history. She is a victim turned villain. The most striking depiction of Medusa as hideous and monstrous is Caravaggio’s 1597 painting, Medusa. Caravaggio captures the exact moment that she is decapitated by Perseus. Her eyes are wide with shock, her mouth is frozen in a silent scream, and her head is surrounded by a chaotic tangle of hissing snakes. The violence is apparent in every detail, including the blood gushing from her neck. This depiction, and many like it, is about singling out a woman who refused to conform to societal norms. She is depi...

Goddess Research Series: Circe - Enchantress, Independent, Misunderstood While developing my digital series on goddesses, I discovered that few figures offer as much complexity as Circe. Often dismissed as a secondary antagonist in the Greco-Roman tradition, she is actually one of the most visually and thematically rich figures in mythology. For this post, I looked into two main sources to see how Circe changed from a "scary" villain in ancient stories to a powerful, independent sorceress in modern ones. I want to use this research to help me move past the "evil witch" tropes and create something deeper for my final project. The first source is Homer’s The Odyssey, which provides the foundational narrative for Circe. In the story, she is the daughter of Helios, the sun god, and the nymph Perse. She lives alone on the island of Aeaea in a "mansion that stands in the middle of a clearing in a dense wood," where she is surrounded by tamed wolves and lions (H...

The Power of Illustrative Representation      This entry's focus is on Chidiebere Ibe, a Nigerian medical student recognized for creating inclusive medical illustrations. He went viral in 2021 for creating an illustration of a Black pregnant woman. Historically, medical textbooks have defaulted to white representations for anatomical studies. This is a dangerous practice, as it often leaves practitioners unprepared to identify conditions on darker skin tones. Since this viral illustration, he has expanded his portfolio through the Illustration Chan ge project, which features medical illustrations of people of color. His recent work covers conditions as they appear on darker skin tones, including atopic dermatitis, lupus, and breast cancer. In relation to my project, I can use representation as a tool for validation and world-building. Chidiebere Ibe's Black Fetus Illustration      To further this research, I also looked into the Mind the Gap   hand boo...

Critical Analysis of Disney Character Design: Legacy vs. Bias This entry analyzes the evolution of Disney’s character design, specifically comparing the technical success of design aspects against their reliance on harmful visuals. While Disney’s use of aesthetically brilliant animation has sustained a prestigious legacy for over a century, the foundation of these designs often relies on “beauty-equals-goodness” binaries.  Historical texts that inspired the films, such as the Grimm brothers’ collections, reveal that the sanitization of folklore didn’t just remove gore, but further enforced a heteronormative, white beauty standard. Originally, these stories were not meant for children but were shared among adults and served as cautionary tales. The original Grimm fairy tales were not sanitized like the Disney adaptations. The Grimm characters often faced gruesome punishments. In Snow White, the Evil Queen is forced to dance in hot iron shoes until she dies. In Cinderella, the steps...