UPDATE: Read the full story of how a team of Roanoke artists helped build Wayne White’s “Big Lick Boom.”

Los Angeles artist Wayne White’s huge art installation, an entertainingly cartoonish look at Roanoke’s railroad history, opens Friday at the Taubman Museum of Art [along with the watershed photography exhibition "Dorothea Lange's America" and Blacksburg artist Andrew Puhl's "Pole Barn."]

A Tennessee native who’s done set design for television and music videos, White promises to give a one-of-a-kind opening presentation for museum members at the preview 5:30 p.m. Thursday evening, an hour-long monologue that incorporates images, animation, puppets and banjo playing. “It’s not just an art talk,” he said. “It’s a piece of theater.”

Here’s a quick preview I shot today using my handy iPhone.

Roanoke artists John Johnson and John Wiercioch (far right, in motion) help to build Wayne White