Daniel Beltrá spent two months photographing the Deepwater oil spill in 2010 and the works are now on view in a show called SPILL at Catherine Edelman Gallery (Chicago).

(For a different approach to the troubled ecosystem, see Michel Varisco's photographs, also aerial, on view at the Ogden Museum.)

We were guided through SCAD buildings for a mere four disciplines: Fibers, Fashion, Industrial Design, and Fine Arts.

The problem is this: how can I listen to our informative hosts when I spy a Marcus Kenney painting down a dark hallway? Or when Michael Porten's sexy-funny series of American Apparel models (his models are hugging axes) appears on a wall beside me? That glowing ectoplasmic canopy was made by a Fibers student?

This is what art school should do: inspire, excite, and celebrate its own talent. (The school purchases many works of art by its students.) 

There are lots of reasons to be pessimistic about American education, but SCAD is not one of them.

Michael Porten (OA emerging superstar) sighting!

This small screening room wasn't on the tour, but the ceiling was mesmerizing.

Fingernails?

Michael Porten sighting!

My bathroom!

Dr. Harrison Key's desk.

Michael Porten's sneaker! 

This is an astonishing museum. It was dramatically expanded and refurbished last year (to the tune of $26 million) and the exhibitions are edgy, fresh, and beautifully installed. Like the rest of the SCAD campus, the site is joyful and uplifting, respectful of the past while ushering in the future. The curating is smart, too. A special nod goes to the current Jane Alexander installation, which is haunting and disturbing and utterly brilliant.

Trenton Doyle Hancock wallpaper (it's 3-D!) and a pink padded elevator.

Israeli artist Sigalit Landau's video installation.

A gown on view in the André Leon Talley Gallery.

Upstairs lounge with fiber art ceiling installation.

Trenton Doyle Hancock wallpaper detail.

There is a lot of terrific art on view at the museum, including a Fred Wilson "institutional intervention" to the Walter O. Evans Collection of African American Art, but one exhibition stands out: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope) by South African artist Jane Alexander, who evokes the dark underside (and aftermath) of apartheid in her scary-beautiful creatures.

You have about two months left to see the show, which closes on June 3. Here are some glimpses of Alexander's work. 

The exhibition continues outside and offers a deft contrast to the manicured lawns and inviting spaces surrounding the museum.

You can see lots more art from the museum's permanent collection at the newly launched Google Art Project.

I admit I am one of L. Kasimu Harris’s groupies. I once followed him around Oaklawn, the horse-racing track in Hot Springs, watching him photograph people. We’re having a party celebrating his fashion photography this Thursday night in New Orleans—and y’all are invited. If you’ve got style, you may wind up on Kasimu’s chic blog.

Please support Louisiana artist Michel Varisco’s book project, Shifting. Here is her description of the series (a five-year labor of love), which, to me, is landscape photography at its most sublime:

Inspired both by the raw beauty of the wetlands and by the fear of losing that treasure, I have been moved to create artwork that will inspire others to witness what I’ve seen. For the last five years (post hurricane Katrina), I’ve photographed the region surrounding New Orleans—the wetlands and Gulf of Mexico and observed the dramatic changes occurring around us. It seems we are at a tipping point in this ecosystem’s endangerment.

See more of Varisco’s photos here at her website. Most of the works are quite large (“Edge of the Marshes,” a polyptych, is 22 feet wide), which means the best way to see them is in person (they’ll be on view at the Ogden next month). Varisco’s aesthetic seems to pull from various inspirations—scientific, documentary reportage, early color photography (Eggleston et al), and abstract art—and her materials (dye sublimated photographs on silk) subtly animate natural substances, such as sand, water, and oil: “Marsh Regeneration Techniques” always stirs me—especially those wayward terraces of, uh, fur and pelt in the center panel—and so does  “Beaches,” with its microscopic textures of stubble, pocks, and a rusty smear that looks like dried blood.