Lee Puffer

Lee Puffer’s sculpture “Big Ear” is part of a bigger series of clown-type gals whose various gestures, facial expressions and multimedia appendages are meant to represent the experience of being human.

“In this case in particular, it’s about how we listen to each other in relationships or how we think we’re listening but maybe we really aren’t,” says Puffer (leepuffer.com), an artist and mom who, after 12 years of kid-rearing, decided to go back to school to get her master’s degree in ceramics at San Diego State University. “Maybe we’re listening to the noise in our head, you know? It’s sort of a metaphor for self sabotage—she thinks she’s listening, but really she has this gun-like finger in her ear.”

For this, and all her ceramic creations, Puffer takes her own personal experiences or finds inspiration in others’ stories, then heads to her studio, where she sits in front of a mirror and makes faces or does her best to emote specific feelings so she can use herself as a model.

Her hope, she says, is to capture the experience of being human and to talk about it with empathy and humor.

“It’s all these qualities that every human being shares but doesn’t really talk openly about,” Puffer says. “I’m poking fun, really, at myself, mainly, but at qualities that we all have.”

Grief, for example, is one human experience that makes several appearances in Being Human Now, Puffer’s solo exhibition on view at Art Produce Gallery in North Park (3139 University Ave.) through March 6 with an opening reception during Ray at Night from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 12. Puffer says she wanted to express what it really feels like to go through tremendously grievous periods, but she didn’t want to overload her work with negativity. Instead, she tries to communicate her ideas in entertaining and whimsical ways.

“Basically, I want to tell the truth about what it’s like to be alive,” Puffer explains. “But I try to keep it light because life can get overwhelmingly difficult sometimes, so I try to keep my sense of humor.”