Luke Terramadre
At his September exhibition, Kyogle artist Mario Sanchez will ask visitors to do something they may not have done since childhood — play with leaves.
Playing with Leaves is a sculptural meditation on memory, craft and the natural world.
Mario’s medium, however, is not botanical. It is leather that is hand-carved, dyed and burnished until it resembles freshly gathered foliage, the kind a child might once have pressed into imaginary collages on the ground.
The idea began, fittingly, as a game.
“Playing with Leaves is inspired by a childhood game where I would collect leaves and create images with them,” Mario said.
“I came back to this game about three years ago when I was developing a new technique to make leaves from leather. I found the game super fun to play again, as an adult.”
For Mario, leather is more than a material; it is a conversation across centuries.
“I love that I use tools that have not changed much, if at all, for thousands of years, a piece of deer antler to shape leather, a cow’s rib to burnish an edge,” he said.
“Every culture in the world has used leather in its own unique way.
“When I began working with it, I promised myself I would learn to use it well enough to make fine art. It took about eight years of working with leather every day before I felt ready.”
The works in Playing with Leaves bear this devotion to craft. Some are whimsical, like leafy butterflies that “choose you” if you decide to play; others are layered with allegory like The Immigrants which uses leaves to evoke movement and displacement. 
A fairy ring of leather mask totems invites viewers to step inside and rearrange leaves themselves, while a large interactive canvas transforms visitors into collaborators.
Despite the precision of his process in design, pattern making, cutting, carving, dyeing and assembly, Mario insists the most thrilling stage is the beginning.
“The design and brainstorming part is definitely the most exhilarating,” he said.
“I spend many nights making items I imagine in my sleep. Sometimes the hardest part is actually starting, because I feel like I have already made it several times in my head.”
If there is mythology to his practice, it is deliberate.
Mario describes himself as a lifelong “fantasy nerd”, with a soft spot for elves, goblins and imagined civilisations.
His leaves sometimes double as artefacts from an invented forest culture that worships the sun, their shapes hinting at an unspoken lore.
“Fantasy is fiction without boundaries,” he said.
“It is very liberating.”
The show, however, is not only about fantasy. It is about reframing how leather, historically tethered to utility and craft, can be seen.
“What I am hoping people will experience when they visit my exhibition is: art,” he said.
“Where the medium is secondary to the aesthetics, not the focus. The medium is of course important, but I try to focus on ideas, concepts and storytelling. ”
At Roxy Gallery, those stories will begin with something disarmingly simple: the act of playing with leaves.
For the artist, it is both nostalgic and ironic, an attempt to preserve life’s fleeting cycles in a material once alive itself.
For visitors, it is an invitation to re-enter a childhood game, this time through the hands of an artist who has made it his own.
Playing with Leaves opening night is on Friday, September 19 at 6pm at the Roxy Gallery, Kyogle.
The exhibition runs until October 26.