Diane Goodman, the woman behind Hare Brain, discovered her love of art in 7th grade. She's since dabbled in ceramics, photography, color copy collage, web design, and now digitally designed neo-folk dolls. You could argue that the dolls really are a culmination of all these varied artistic endeavors or you could argue that Diane's a hapless dilettante.

Either way, she started making dolls in the winter of 2001. Broke, because of her dotcom layoff, she decided to make dolls of her cats for her hubby for the holidays. She'd just illicitly earned (some would call it barter) a printer and a digital camera for some design work and wanted to put them to use. The dolls were a small hit, endearing to the coparent of said cats, although a slightly embarrassing gift for her husband what with them being dolls and all. Diane put her needle down for awhile and focused on legitimate work. Once that dried up she remember how fun it was to create them and decided that if she was to continue to make dolls she needed to lose the saccharine side and get edgy. Weird legs, bad words, mad faces, this was the stuff that her dolls would be made of, that and stuffing and thus Hare Brain was born.

Diane's dolls are mood dolls, expressions of feelings writ large. Playful, angry, brooding, they're like teenagers, wearing their moods on their sleeves. No censure, no restraint. Diane's design background demands that each element has its place and meaning. The dolls are a canvas where the rigid rules of design can be cast off, where each extra "unnecessary" flourish is welcome.