Jane’s Story

Jane Witzel-Yanez is a character designer, concept artist, and sculptor whose work brings imagined worlds and creatures to life.

She has been creative for as long as she can remember. For her, making things isn't optional, it's essential. Over the years she's worked across countless materials and media, but it's character design and traditional costuming, sculpting, and painting that she keeps returning to, and all three come together in the one-of-a-kind art dolls she creates today.

Working primarily in polymer clay over hand-built wire armatures, Jane sculpts each character from the head down .Often starting with nothing more than an image in her mind, occasionally a quick sketch, but usually just diving straight in and letting the piece take shape as she works. Her dolls live in the liminal space between imagination and reality. Familiar enough to feel real, strange enough to remind you they're not. It's in that in-between where her characters take on their own presence, as though they've simply been discovered in the wild rather than made.

Halloween, Alice in Wonderland, and all things Disney are among Jane's greatest sources of inspiration, and it shows in her work. Rather than sticking to traditional witches and ghouls, she has developed her own cast of characters, including an evolving series of "seasonal witches," alongside pieces inspired by everything from Disneyland's Haunted Mansion to classic poetry. Her dolls are known for their elaborate, hand-finished costuming, often built from repurposed fabrics, trims, and unexpected materials, with many of the accessories designed and printed by hand to complete the illusion.

Jane lives in Huntington Beach, California, with her husband Mike and their three pit-mixes.