The Embrace by Nathalie Pouliquen. First place sculpture winner of the 2018 Beacon Celebration of the Art competition.

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Sculpture, jewelry, pottery, mixed-media and more comprised the 172 entries in the Sculpture/Jewelry/Pottery/Mixed Media category of the Beacon’s Celebration of the Arts. Here’s a look at the three top winners.

First place
Nathalie Pouliquen, Bethesda, Md.

“I intend to pay tribute to the reality of the world, to its beauty — apparent or hidden,” said painter-sculptor Nathalie Pouliquen, who won not just first place for one of her sculptures and an honorable mention for another, but whose oil-on-canvas won third place in the painting and drawing category.

“All media interests me — watercolor, pastel, acrylic or oil in painting, and working with clay, wood or stone in sculpture,” said the 59-year-old, a onetime urban planner.

Her first prize-winning sculpture, “The Embrace,” is a 10” x 21” x 7” limestone and wood statue of a couple entwined in each other’s arms. The work was “the result of a long creative process combining the taking into account of the physical constraints of the material and my desire to celebrate the beauty of creation, the advent of life,” said the artist.

Pouliquen said that she had no formal training before she began in 2003 “to translate my surroundings into two and three dimensions.” Since 2015, after some 30 years, she has gone back to school, studying Fine Arts at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md.

“My first academic goal is to get an associate’s degree in fine arts, then, perhaps, to get a bachelor’s degree,” she said. Her long-term goal is “to work in the arts conservation field.”

All this studying, she indicated, would not interfere with her creativity.

“Gratitude at being alive is the purpose of my art work,” she said. “Life must be the expression of freedom in a continuous flow of exploring, learning, sharing.”

Born in Provence, France — birthplace and adopted home of many great 19th and 20th century artists, such as Cezanne, Van Gogh and Picasso — Pouliquen is a graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris. Her degree was in geography.

For the past 20 years, she has been an “expatriate,” living in Slovakia, the United Kingdom, China and, for the last six years, in the D.C. area. She currently lives in Bethesda. She is the mother of three.

Despite her very evident talent, Pouliquen has not yet had a gallery or museum exhibition. “I have only managed to sell my artworks as an amateur, through shows organized with friends, at the French Embassy, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank or in private locations,” she said.

Perhaps the publishing of her Celebration of the Arts wins, coupled with the display of three of her works at the Pepco Edison Street Gallery this fall, will help launch her career.

Second place
Michael Smith, Columbia, Md.

When he is not working on new ways to predict floods and droughts at the National Weather Service, Michael Smith is spending time at home on his hobby as an arts and crafts metalsmith.

Among other things, the 59-year-old research hydrologist crafts lamps, such as the “hand-wrought copper lamp with 4-panel mica shade and four sockets” that earned him the second place prize in the contest. The desk-sized lamp is both sturdy in its brass base and stylish in its mica shade.

Smith said he turned to metalworking “as a hobby” 17 years ago. Among other things, his goal was to work as the artisans did in the early 20th century when, as a reaction to ordinary machine-made objects, they began an Arts and Crafts movement that revived the guild crafts of earlier times.

He recalled that, one day in the 1990s, his wife, Megan, who was working in interior design, brought home an issue of Architectural Digest. It featured a home decorated in the Arts and Crafts movement style.

“As soon as I saw this article, I said to myself: ‘This is me!’ The simplicity appealed to my pragmatic and functional nature,” he said.

He took lessons through a woodworking club in Laurel, where the couple was living at the time, and made several pieces of furniture.

“Along the way, I began to notice the copper work of the Arts and Crafts period,” Smith said. “I was attracted to the beauty of aged copper, and the way the metal smiths left the final series of hammer marks in the decoration.

“I was especially attracted to the lighting from this period, which featured copper-framed shades with mica panels. The soft amber glow of the mica is reminiscent of the gas lights from the early 1900s.”

Thus, his prize-winning lamp, and Smith’s dedication to metal-working. “It is deeply satisfying to make lamps and other items for our home and for gifts,” Smith said. “There is something very special about hand-made items.”

Third place
Victor Peter Dyni, Washington, D.C.

Dyni, 84, was chief music librarian for the D.C. Public Libraries until he retired in 1996, and also performed as a “professional-amateur” pianist for 75 years. He now channels his creativity into stained glass, the medium that won him third place in the Celebration of the Arts.

“Lady in Glass,” his 11” x 33” creation featuring a tall, slender woman in a long, multi-colored dress, is based on “no one in particular — just a figment of my imagination,” he said.

The female figure came from a line drawing he made some months ago, “and I just thought this drawing would be good for stained glass,” he said. The piece was created in about 10 to 12 hours of work over several days, he said.

“I just try the colors piece-by-piece, and I decide whether they go together or not. I work mostly in patterns, geometric designs. You could say my finished creation is by accident.”

Dyni noted that stained glass designs “have attracted me all my life,” and he began working in the medium “as a hobby” some 20 years ago, after he was fully retired from his library service.

“I saw a sign in a store window in Kensington that said they give lessons in stained glass, and I enrolled in the classes,” he recalled.

While you could say, as Dyni did, that he is “not into religion,” he still greatly admires the stained glass windows in many churches. “The National Cathedral has a number of beautiful windows,” he said

He tries to work at his stained glass projects for “an hour or two” each day in the basement studio of his Washington, D.C. home, where he designs, cuts and solders together the glass pieces.

He said he often finds himself “getting lost” in his work. “I’m working down there for what I think is about five minutes, then I look at my watch and see I’ve been at it for one or two hours.”

Dyni also keeps busy practicing piano every day and giving piano recitals once a month at retirement homes in the area. Over the years, he has participated three times at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Texas, and at amateur piano festivals in Paris, Berlin and Vienna.

Honorable mentions

Works from the following artists were awarded honorable mention:

Lorraine Arden, Washington, D.C.
Donna J. Battle, Washington, D.C.
Jennifer L. Blake, Columbia, Md.
Norman Frederick Estrin, Silver Spring, Md.
Addison Newton Likins, La Plata, Md.
Nathalie Pouliquen, Bethesda, Md.
Sarah Lee Province, Silver Spring, Md.
Christopher Ruch, Ebony, Va.
Richard Starr, Crofton, Md.
Sharon Lee Weinstein, Ellicott City, Md.
Edward C. Wlodarczak, N. Potomac, Md.
John J. Yeager, Perry Hall, Md.