The National Sculpture Society awards the Laura Ziegler and Charlotte Geffken Scholarships. The scholarships are for emerging sculptors and cover most of the expenses associated with attending the Sculpture Celebration. The jury of selection included sculptors Alicia Ponzio, Adam Matano and Steff Rocknak.

The 2025 scholarships will be awarded to Marina Melluzzo, Heidi Mortensen and Karen Swenholt.

Marina Melluzzo is a second-year sculptor student at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts. She’s received recognition from the Society of Connecticut Sculptors and from the 2022 ARC Scholarship Fund.

In 2024, Heidi Mortensen earned an MFA, Sculpture Dimensional Studies, School of Art & Design, at Alfred University (Alfred, NY). On July 23, 2025, her solo exhibition, ‘Heidi Mortensen: Holding Memory,’ opens at UrbanGlass (Brooklyn, NY).

Karen Swenholt recently exhibited in the NSS ‘Sacred Spirit’ and ‘90th Annual Awards’ Exhibitions. For Karen, “Art is its own language. I love sculpting for the joy of building the object and where that process takes my heart and mind.”

The scholarships are funded by a bequest from the estates of Laura Ziegler (1927-2017) and Charlotte Geffken (1902-1987). Ziegler, a Fellow of the NSS, has work in the collection of MoMA and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Geffken was a sculpting instructor at the Saranac Lake Craft Guild and an occupational therapist at the Ray Brook Sanitorium (the Adirondacks, NY).