Walking through Shawn Smith’s Austin studio, you would be forgiven if you believed it was filled with works from multiple artists. In one corner, hundreds of slices of metal pipe are welded together. Nearby, a life-size chimpanzee made by assembling small colored blocks is almost complete. Elsewhere, both a paper collage and stained glass sculpture are in progress. “It’s enriching to work with various types of materials,” says the artist of the creative space that adjoins his home. “They’re like different languages being spoken...