Boxes to Play With and Ponder

What’s with all these boxes, scattered about the middle of the central great room, upstairs at ?

At first glance, they appear to be just that: wooden boxes or crates, all a-jumble. Have they been plopped down here temporarily, perhaps on their way to someplace else?

At second glance, one realizes that some of these boxes have images on them. Just one example: a picture of a sconce, with the word “sconce” also printed onto that box. Some of the words or word groupings that appear on a specific box: “dream,” “bead and reel,” “earthquake,” “beware,” “spider web,” “double return staircase,” “pod of pearls.

Get it? If you are an architect, you might be getting warm.

The words, ideas and images all relate, in some way, to ornament and architecture throughout the Callanwolde manse. (The Gothic-Tudor mansion was built in 1920 as the home of Coca-Cola heir Charles Howard Candler).

But this is not just a disarray of large wooden boxes.

It’s “A Sculptural Love Poem to Architecture,” a site-specific installation created by Ruth Stanford, an associate professor of sculpture at Georgia State University. Stanford has previously created installations at places such as cemeteries and abandoned buildings.

From “corbel” and “crockets” to “trefoils” and “tracery,” Stanford is “fascinated by the names of each element of the vast array of structures, shapes and patterns that come together to complete the spaces we inhabit.”

The free exhibit continues through Aug. 26, at the fine arts center on Briarcliff Road. It’s an interactive installation: You’re invited to move the boxes around to create your own ideas and architecture.

Hundreds of kids have been enrolled in summer camps at Callanwolde this summer, and many of them have enjoyed a visit to the Stanford installation to make a fort or other creative design out of the crates.

“The children are having a great time climbing around and playing among the blocks of sculpture,” said Nancy Riggs, who teachers the “On Stage” drama camp for ages 5 to 10.

In some ways, the exhibit is like a giant version of magnetic poetry for one’s refrigerator. Visitors are encouraged to put unexpected words and images together so others might come upon their arrangements for nothing more than contemplation.

Artist Stanford’s “hope is that viewers will carry the playful experience of the work with them . . . and perhaps take notice of the elegance that exists in the details on the spaces they inhabit.”

Susan Summer, arts events director for the center, calls the exhibit “sculptural poetry and a lot of fun."

"I never knew so many architectural words existed and that many of them related to design details of the Callanwolde mansion,.” Summer said.

If you go: A Scuptural Love Poem to Architecture by Ruth Stanford (with assistance from Terri McIntosh and Jennifer Wheelock), is free and open to the public, 10am to 8pm weekdays and 10am to 3pm Saturdays through August 26, at Callanwolde, 980 Briarcliff Road NE, Atlanta, 30306, 404-872-5338; www.callanwolde.org, www.kickstarter.com