Mary Huntoon, who was born in 1896 in Topeka, is one of the artists featured in an online book created by a Kansas University librarian. Huntoon created this work, Man

The shapers of some of America’s most recognizable icons – Mount Rushmore, Smokey Bear and the Wild West – have ties to Kansas.

Until recently, it was hard to find the names of these and other Kansas artists in one document. But thanks to more than two decades of work by Susan Craig, the names and brief biographies of Gutzon Borglum, Rudolph Wendelin, Frederic Remington – the creators, respectively, of those three icons – and about 1,750 other artists with Kansas connections can be found in one place.

Craig, head of the Murphy Art and Architecture Library at Kansas University, has been working since 1981 to create a database of information on Kansas artists. The work, which can be found online at KU ScholarWorks, is titled “The Biographical Dictionary of Kansas Artists (Active before 1945).”

Craig recently won the Worldwide Books Award for Electronic Resources, which is presented by the Art Libraries Society of North America.

After working in California and New York and then returning to her native state, Craig said she realized that Kansas didn’t have the useful reference guide to artists that could be found in other states.

So more than 25 years ago, she began looking up information on Kansas artists that either created art or were born before 1945.

She traveled to public libraries, flipping through old city directories and looking through archives. She even made a trip to the Smithsonian Institution.

By 1990, Craig had completed much of her work and tried to have it published. She had little luck. The information – cataloged on note cards and sitting in shoe boxes – was housed in her attic for about 15 years.

She started working on the project again in 2005 and decided to publish the work as an electronic book, rather than in paper form. Having the book online means it is free and can be easily searched.

The artists in the dictionary were born in Kansas or lived in the state. Craig included the artists’ birthplaces, birth and death dates, what kind of art they created, their education, exhibit record, awards and the public collections where their work is displayed.

“I loved the idea of folks from small towns in Kansas ending up in New York or Chicago or Stanford or Paris to study art,” Craig told a group of about 30 at a presentation of the eBook Monday afternoon.

Some of the artists featured in Craig’s dictionary have created works worthy of the halls of the Smithsonian while other artists’ works are displayed on post office walls or once appeared on the cover of national magazines, such as the Saturday Evening Post and Harper’s Weekly.

Along with painters and sculptors, Craig included potters, quilters and wood carvers in the eBook.

The response to the dictionary has been rewarding, Craig said.

The information has been used by the artists’ families, collectors and other art librarians. The site has averaged about 100 hits a month since it was put online last August.

“It’s incredibly satisfying to know all the hours spent slogging through stuff is really paying off,” Craig said.