BY BRETT ANDERSON
Forbes Lipschitz finds poetry in the catfish pond landscapes of the Mississippi Delta.
From the October 2016 issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine 
When Forbes Lipschitz, ASLA, was a senior at Pomona College, in Claremont, California, she created a series of larger-than-life portraits. The subjects were genetically modified animals. One portrays a sheep that, rendered bald by an injection, resembles a shar-pei. Another captures a goat bred to produce spider silk protein. ?I was basically just interested in the moral ambiguity of biotechnology,? Lipschitz explains. ?I was using the portrait as a means to reveal that complexity.?
The portraits constituted Lipschitz?s senior thesis at Pomona, where she studied environmental studies and art, a combo major she designed herself. The animal portraits are precociously accomplished feats of realism notably lacking in judgment. The fluoro-pig, for example, looks happy and, aside from being fluorescent, normal. Today, most of the artwork hangs in Lipschitz?s parents? house in Little Rock, Arkansas. ?The featherless chicken greets people somewhat ominously as you leave the kitchen,? she says. Decommissioned cat sh ponds near Morgan City, Louisiana, converted into permanent wetlands and bottomland hardwood forest. Forbes Lipschitz, ASLA, and Justine Holzman, Associate ASLA
The portraits represent Lipschitz?s first serious attempt to use art to interrogate humankind?s interventions in nature. The images provoke ques...