CAWKER CITY ? It’s been mentioned in at least three Hollywood movies and has drawn thousands of people into this community of 500.

Now, on its 50th anniversary, the world’s largest ball of twine has inspired art that’s exhibited in storefront windows along what a Cawker City artist has dubbed the Gallery Walk of Twine.

Cher Heller Olson and her husband, Ross, moved to the north-central Kansas town less than two years ago. Since then, Cher Olson has created a series of paintings — takeoffs of masterpieces — each containing a whimsical ball of twine.

One painting has Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” clasping a ball of twine while flashing her mysterious smile. In another, Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Can” has been turned into “Campbell’s Twine Soup.” Olson’s version of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” has the farmwife holding a ball of twine.

“I just wanted to accentuate the positive,” Olson said. “Our positive is our ball of twine.”

The paintings have helped keep passers-by in town longer. In the process, they may learn how Cawker City became home to the world’s largest ball of twine.

In 1872, Col. E.H. Cawker built the community’s first house. Two years later, the town was incorporated, and by 1880, it had 2,000 residents, a mill, banks, churches, an opera house and a city auditorium.

But like many rural Kansas towns, Cawker City eventually began losing population. In 1960, the last passenger trains stopped coming.

Seven years earlier, in 1953, Cawker City farmer Frank Stoeber had begun slowly knotting his way to fame. Like many farmers, Stoeber had a hay baler that used twine, and once those bales were fed to livestock, he had plenty of leftover twine.

By 1957, the ball weighed 5,000 pounds, stood 8 feet high and used 1,175,180 feet of twine.

In 1961, when Kansas observed its centennial and hundreds of communities had celebrations, Stoeber brought his ball of twine into town and left it.

Each year for the past 15 years the town has sponsored a twine-a-thon, inviting people to add more twine to the ball, which now is more than 10 feet tall and 41 feet around. Visitors can come by and touch it 24 hours a day.

It’s been noted in at least three Hollywood movies: “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” “Beethoven’s Third” and “Michael.”

“Culturally speaking, the ball of twine is the knot that ties our community together,” Mayor Dottie Roberts said.