Debbie Albrand, of McKinney (left) and Sue Harrington of Wichita Falls, playfully can-can on an interactive musical rug in one of the Old Jail Art Center's jail cells Friday June. 16, 2017. The Cell Series features Joel Sampson's "Sound Advice - Beats and Other Bits", a collection of devices which generate sound. The exhibit will be on display until August 26.(Photo: Ronald W. Erdrich/Reporter-News)Buy Photo

ALBANY All the kids know Teddy Roosevelt. We can thank Robin Williams for that.

Erin Whitmore, the education director for the Old Jail Art Center, chuckled at the irony. Standing in the middle of the museums Warhol: Cowboys Indians Polaroids, she gestured toward Andy Warhols silkscreen image of the nations 26th President.

The kids don't always recognize Annie Oakley, but they do recognize Teddy Roosevelt because of the Night at the Museum movies, she said. And even the itty-bitties recognize John Wayne.

Warhols pop art is meant to be a reflection of popular culture.

So popular people, popular images; very easily recognizable and accessible imagery, Whitmore explained. The kids really respond to it; even if they don't know who it is, they know that the image is really important because it's larger than life.

Patrick Kelly, the executive director and curator of the museum, chimed in.

And their pop culture is different than our pop culture, he said. Thats certainly seems true when considering the childrens identification of Roosevelt as the hero of a comedy, as opposed to being the Hero of San Juan Hill even though the movies character is based upon that period in Roosevelts life.

The pictures are about three-feet square with bright colors overlaid by the artist. Each color is from a separate mask, so if 15 colors appear on a work then it took an equal number of screens to lay it on.

Accompanying the exhibit are a collection of Polaroid photographs made by Warhol as studies for different subjects. The artist would make dozens or hundreds of pictures, then work with the subject to select the best one. From there it was transferred to paper using a halftone screening process, then the overlay of colors would start from there.

His life was all about documenting everything that was around him, he wasn't an artist on one side and Andy Warhol on the other, Kelly said.

As an exploration of popular culture, the Warhol suite has a connection to another exhibit in the museum called, Showtime: Photographs of Music Legends by Watt Casey, Jr.

Watt Casey is actually a rancher from this area he goes to my church and years ago he was talking about his life and photographing all these musical legends from Willie Nelson up to John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, Kelly said.

As a student at the University of Texas in the early 1970s, Casey began covering for the Daily Texan Austins music scene, which at that time was beginning to flower. After school, he continued working, spending more than a decade photographing music icons as they passed through Texas and accumulating thousands of photographs in the process.

Stevie Ray Vaughan performs in Austin May 9, 1982. This image and others are part of an exhibit at the Old Jair Art Center in Albany entitled "Showtime: Photographs of Music Legends by Watt Casey, Jr." The collection of 45 pictures will be on display until August 26.(Photo: Photograph courtesy of Watt Casey, Jr.)

We culled them down to about 45 pictures, which are on display here, Kelly said. Plus, A&M Press is publishing a book of his with these works and additional pictures.

That book, My Camera is a Guitar, is scheduled to come out in November. Kelly said they will invite Casey in for a lecture when it is released.

The majority of the images are black and white, typically with artists performing or relaxing with friends. They capture a time in Austins history when music and the people who made it felt more accessible.

Theres an immediacy present in many of the images. Bluesmen howl their lyrics into the microphone with such an intensity that its almost like the sound is struggling to free itself from the picture.

In another, Stevie Ray Vaughan smiles with his band at a favorite barbecue joint. In the background a cashier slouches behind the register, photo-bombing the scene in his aviator shades and looking nearly as cool as the band.

Museum patrons view exhibits by Watt Casey, Jr. and Andy Warhol Friday June 16, 2017 at the Old Jail Art Center in Albany. The exhibits will be be on display until August 26.(Photo: Ronald W. Erdrich/Reporter-News)

Finally, the Cell Series brings everything together with Joel Sampsons Sound Advice Beats and Other Bits. If Caseys work centers around musicians and the sounds they make, Sampson eliminates the musician and just features the sound.

Its very interactive and fun, Whitmore said. A lot of the pieces look like a one-man band, without the man.

Artists invited to exhibit for the Cell Series typically design their pieces with the original function of the jail cell rooms in mind. Sometimes that means pondering themes of isolation, or sometimes it means using the physical features of the room as a frame in which to create.

Sampson utilizes the hard surfaces of the rooms to amplify the sounds made from his creations. Some are electronically generated, some are from objects striking pots and pans. Most are interactive and feature a large plastic button whose bright color seems to cry out, Push me!

I do think he was interested in the sound and what it does in a space like that, Whitmore observed. When youve got multiple sources coming at one time, its a cacophony. Some are whirring, some are beeping, and some are cow bells.

It's definitely a sensory overload when everything is going off in there at one time, agreed Kelly. But there's also the opportunity, when there's not a lot of people in there at one time, for you can sit and listen to one piece in particular.

In one of the rooms, Sampson uses an inexpensive computer to recite the Declaration of Independence using Morse code.

You can read more into that work and interpret that piece to understand how those concepts are disseminated, Kelly said. You can go as deep as you want.

All three exhibits are on display until August 26.

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