shawn smith: pixelated sculptures

‘peafile’ by shawn smith, 2006 (plywood, ink, acrylic paint)

austin, texas based artist shawn smith explores the intersection between the digital world and reality with his pixilated wood sculptures. these works are composed of small pieces of wood that smith sculpts together, treating them as individual pixels to form one complete image. smith focuses on how we experience nature through technology and therefore a lot of his piece are representations of animals and objects of nature. smith calls these pieces ‘re-things’ and he sculpts them based on images he finds online.

in my building process, I start with a full sheet of material like plywood or MDF and cut it into 1/2″ strips of varying lengths–typically 1/2″ to 2′ long. I then hand dye each strip of wood individually with dyes mixed from ink and acrylic paint.  I mix each color by hand to create a huge palette of colors in order to give the sculpture more depth and visual interest before assembling the object.

http://www.shawnsmithart.com

‘mahi mahi’ by shawn smith, 2006 (plywood, ink, acrylic paint)

‘double dahl’ by shawn smith, 2007 (plywood, ink, acrylic paint)

‘8bit campfire’ by shawn smith, 2005 (1cm plastic cubes and spray paint)

‘game’ by shawn smith, 2006 (plywood)

‘vacuity’ by shawn smith, 2007 (plywood, ink, & acrylic paint)

‘vicious venue’ by shawn smith, 2009 (mixed media)

‘parasitized shark’ by shawn smith, 2007 (plywood, ink, acrylic paint)

‘kept’ by shawn smith, 2009 (bass wood, ink, acrylic paint, and found bird cage)

‘arctic game’ by shawn smith, 2006 (mdf, paint)