Melissa Hampton is a contemporary jewelry artist from St. Louis, Missouri. She became fascinated with jewelry and the idea of adornment after inheriting her grandmother’s collection of vintage costume jewelry as a young girl. She went on to explore the art jewelry field and earned a Masters in Fine Arts: Studio Art from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, IL in 2015 where she majored in Metals and Jewelry Design. She uses traditional techniques such as hand fabrication, fusing, carving, inlay, engraving, and stone setting alongside a more playful, experimental technique with high karat alloys of yellow gold she calls "Gold Flow," to express big ideas in the form of tiny wearable artisan sculptures. In her work, she strives to visually express the power of creation stories to merge the physical, geological, and spiritual and how these stories often become powerful metaphors for the human experience.