As a kid, Shawn Smith spent hours playing the Atari game Pitfall , in which players tromp though a forested gauntlet of rolling logs, quicksand, rattlesnakes, and fire. “I’d never been camping, so I thought that’s what it was: wrestling crocodiles living in pixelated lakes, jumping over scorpions,” Smith says. “The whole idea was to avoid nature and win some gold coins.”
That 8-bit-centric worldview still holds true for the Austin artist, who is working on a series called Re-things : three-dimensional pixelated sculptures of animals and other outdoorsy objects, which he builds from wooden cubes and square


