Born in Wellington in 1986, Sam Kelly now resides in Taranaki with her husband and three boys. Sam completed a Bachelor of Applied Arts at Whitireia in 2010. In 2018, she co-founded The Jewel and the Jeweller, a contemporary Jewellery Gallery and Workshop.

Sam has primarily made jewellery from bone for the last 13 years and has only started exploring larger scale bone sculptures in the last 3 years. Sam was selected for the prestigious Talente, Munich, in 2011. She was also awarded the inaugural RT Nelson Sculpture award in 2021, and was awarded a Molly Morpeth Merit award in 2022. Sam has exhibited in New Zealand, Australia and Munich.