Carving Out a Place for Myself: Lito / Leaf-Cutting Artist

Our guest today is Lito, a leaf-cutting artist. He carves his scenes onto small, palm-sized leaves. The delicate, intricate designs tell evocative stories that delight and soothe people's souls. He's held exhibitions in Japan, and his work has also been featured in the media overseas. Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, he channels his energy into his craft. The resulting work is imbued with a warm, gentle touch. We asked him about the heart that goes into his leaf cutouts.

Rabbits, frogs, mice, and so on... each leaf is like a scene from the everyday lives of a group of animal characters. I want people to be able to look at their phones after a long day and see something soul-nourishing, something heartening. My goal is to create the kind of work that gives my audience a boost, or a gentle nudge.

Lito first started creating his cutouts in the beginning of 2020. He carves playful, lively silhouettes of animals onto palm-sized leaves. Scenes that evoke Japan and other parts of the world... fairy tales and children's books. To date, he's made over 400 cutouts. In 2021, he published a collection of his work. Along with each picture and its title is a short evocative passage that feels like a vignette out of a larger story.

Depending on the world I'm trying to create, I bring in elements of places I was taken as a child, or my memories of having fun. That's how I approach it every day. If someone is delighted in a way I don't expect, that's fine too. If I have a larger character who's next to a smaller character, maybe they're parent and child, or maybe they're siblings. I leave that part to the imagination. I try not to spell it all out.

Lito has turned his room at home into his workspace. He's set a goal for himself. To make one cutout a day. He uses a pen and a craft knife. He keeps his sketches handy for inspiration as he comes up with the scene he will draw that day. Once he's settled on a design, he draws it onto the back of a leaf using a pen. He then carves out the design with his craft knife, using his lines as a guide. He starts with small details first, such as the eyes of his characters.

Unlike flat sheets of paper, leaves do not have uniform thickness. Lito pays attention to the shape of the surface and adjusts the pressure he applies with his knife accordingly. He checks his progress repeatedly as he meticulously creates his scene.

OK. Finished.

He says that his more complex designs can take upwards of eight hours to complete. As a self-taught artist, he developed his own process through trial and error.

I drop the thin sharp tip of the knife down into the leaf, careful to keep it as perpendicular as possible. I cut into the leaf using a tapping motion, guiding the knife down like the needle of a sewing machine. The slightest tilt of the blade can make the incision too big. So my technique is all about using only the very tip of the knife. So the thinner the better. I'd use a surgical knife if I could.

After he finishes a cutout, there's still one more thing he has to do.

The sky is so beautiful.

He's come out to a public park with views of the open sky. He raises his leaf art upwards and snaps a picture with his smartphone for social media.

I want to get the sky as well as the surrounding foliage. I've come to realize that, that looks really beautiful. The surrounding trees kind of make a natural frame for my work. I hold up my leaf art so it's in the middle of that. I often think about how much easier it'd be to photograph it against my wall at home. Even if it's not windy, the slightest breeze can distort the design. It's very delicate. Admittedly, there are times when I get tired of carving leaves every day. Times when I'm out of ideas. But then a follower will write "Seeing your posts makes me happy," and I know I'll be at it again tomorrow. No time to rest.

Lito's work has garnered widespread attention on social media. He currently has nearly 300,000 followers on Instagram. People from around the world express their enchantment in their own language.

A lot of people say that my work made them cry. I'm not really sure why it evokes that kind of response... but at the same time that tells me that my little leaf art spreads good in the world in its own small way.

Prior to starting to create his leaf art, Lito had no formal experience studying art. After graduating university, he began working for a food company. It was the start of a seven-year stint as a "salaryman." But he seemed to take longer than others to complete tasks, and he was frequently reprimanded by his boss. He ended up working at three different companies over the seven-year span. But his experience was always the same.

I get so fixated on certain things that the people around me end up having to take care of odd jobs, and they'd be left with the impression that I avoided those tasks. I was often getting reprimanded by my superiors and I just couldn't seem to work like others did. I so wanted to be helpful to others, and in my mind, I took my work seriously, but the people around me thought I was just slacking off, which really frustrated me. And I dreaded how people who were initially so nice to me would gradually become cold and distant. In those moments, I'd start hating myself, too. Why was I so useless?

Lito was eager to do well, but always found himself failing at work. He felt lost. Then one day, he read about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder on the internet. As he researched the disorder, he found out that one of the symptoms was hyperfocus, becoming so engrossed in certain things that you block out the world around you. He wasted no time in going to a clinic, where he was diagnosed with ADHD.

It was a mix of happiness and relief. You could say it was like I was freed of this enormous weight. For a long time, I'd struggled to make sense of it. Why was I so bad at work? Why was everyone else so quick to get a hang of things? I couldn't figure it out. But all of a sudden, it all made sense. Instead of making my world smaller, it opened it up. I decided from that point on, I would change my approach to life. In that moment I found a new attitude toward life.

Lito left his company and began searching for a new job. But his job search post-diagnosis had its own challenges.

Trying to hide a disability would be exhausting, and I didn't want to lie. So I decided to seek employment as a disabled person. So I got my disability certificate and went to the employment service center. There was a service window for disabled applicants. I put in my search criteria and was shocked at how few job listings came up. When I filled out my info and requirements, I got back three matches. That's all. It was like I was being told there were only three possible paths for me. I felt terrible. It also made me mad. So I decided I needed a different approach. I stopped going to the employment service center. Instead, I focused on understanding myself better. I bought a bunch of books on ADHD and learned more about my personality traits.

Hyperfocus means I zero in and get fixated on certain activities. But I also notice minute details in a way that other people without the disorder can't. I started experimenting to see if I couldn't apply that somehow. And that's how I started drawing illustrations with a ball-point pen.

Determined to channel his ability to focus into something productive, Lito began posting his intricate drawings on social media. But the internet was full of creators from around the world posting their work, and he had trouble gaining traction. With his savings dwindling, he knew he had to produce results soon. One day he came across leaf art by an overseas artist, and he was immediately drawn to the world of leaf cutouts.

I happened to see a picture someone posted of some animals they'd carved into a leaf. And it just blew my mind that you could do something like that with a leaf. It was just so cute and interesting, I wanted to try for myself. It didn't even cross my mind that it would sell, I just wanted to give it a shot. So that was how this all started.

These days, Lito is fielding requests from around Japan to host solo exhibitions of his work. On this day, his work was being exhibited at a shopping mall in the city of Inazawa in Aichi Prefecture.

His work tells a story. Each leaf is a world unto itself.

I read about his background and was amazed. This is incredible, just so moving.

With more opportunities to showcase his work, Lito has more chances to hear from his wide group of followers.

I had someone approach me and tell me that their five-year-old son had been diagnosed with a developmental disability. They were wracking their brains trying to figure out what they could do for their child. And that's when they came across my work and learned about my story. A lot of people tell me that my story lifted a weight off their shoulders by showing them there are alternative ways to live in society, there are options.

In my case, it wasn't like I had some special talent. If anything, my tendency to get fixated on certain things caused more difficulties for me. But changing my environment allowed me to be useful to others. It's allowed me to bring joy to all these people. If you're in a difficult situation or environment, you can break free. I want to show people it's possible.

(Do you have any words to live by?)

"Persistence over talent." A lot of people tell me that they're amazed by my leaf cutout art, but I think the process is more important than the result. The fact is that I've been doing this every day, developing my process. I'm where I am today because I've kept at this day-in and day-out. So this is my motto as a leaf-cutting artist.