Biography

Artist and metalsmith Melissa Hampton launched Ascendant Jewelry Studio in August 2019. Although she has been making jewelry for decades, she took time after graduate school to build her business while working full time in the nonprofit sector. Born and raised outside of St. Louis, MO, Melissa 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 this field and in 2015 earned a Masters in Fine Arts: Studio Art from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville where she majored in Metals and Jewelry Design. She uses a variety of traditional and unconventional metalsmithing techniques to express big ideas in the form of wearable sculpture. Through fabrication, forging, fusing, and a technique that she calls “Flow,” which is a hallmark of her work, Melissa expresses her ideas using traditional techniques in unconventional ways.

Artist Statement

In my conceptual jewelry work, I strive to visually express the power of origin stories to merge the physical, geological, and spiritual and how these stories often become powerful metaphors for human experience. My work is a meditation on how process and concept poetically overlap. Each piece is a small, wearable metaphor that expresses big, awe inspiring ideas; miniature explorations of monumental questions through precious, everyday reminders of who we are, where we come from, and, perhaps, where we might ascend.