About Sally

Sally O’Neill has always been driven by creativity and a deep love of metalwork. Encouraged by her father, a blacksmith, she built her first jewelry studio in their Santa Fe home. By her teenage years, she was already designing, fabricating, and selling her work along the iconic Canyon Road art district.

Sally continued to refine her craft through her college studies at the University of Colorado, the Universidad de Sevilla in Spain, and the University of New Mexico, where she earned her BAFA in Metals. She has maintained a working studio since the age of fifteen.

For more than forty years, Sally has also been an avid collector of antique and vintage jewelry. Her design sensibilities are strongly influenced by the Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and Edwardian eras—styles that continue to surface in her contemporary work through line, balance, and fine attention to detail.

Sally is a Graduate Gemologist (GG) from the Gemological Institute of America and a Certified Master Appraiser (CMA) with the National Association of Jewelry Appraisers. She remains committed to ongoing education, attending workshops and advanced trainings whenever possible to expand and refine her skills.

Now based in Bozeman, Montana, Sally also expresses her creativity through music. She plays fiddle, banjo, and guitar in the Bebe LeBoeuf Cajun Band and enjoys performing in productions with the Intermountain Opera.

Sally is also a metalsmithing instructor at the Emerson Cultural Center.  And is a Montana Artreprenuer (MAP) alumna.

Her jewelry has been shown and sold in galleries throughout the Mountain West, including Old Main Gallery and A. Banks Gallery in Bozeman, Harmony Scott Gallery in Carbondale, Colorado, and Jett Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

One of Sally’s greatest passions is not just how jewelry looks, but how it feels on the wearer. She is attentive to balance, comfort, and secure construction—how earrings hang perfectly on the earlobe, which clasps offer the safest closure, and how each piece moves with the body. As someone who has worn and created jewelry for most of her life, her expertise is both technical and intuitive, resulting in pieces that are as comfortable as they are beautiful.