David Kamm was born in 1952 in West Union, Iowa. He graduated from Wartburg College in 1974 with a B.A. in art education. Working primarily in collages, prints, and mixed media, he taught for several years in various school districts, and in 1976 he relocated to Decorah, Iowa where he established a business specializing in hand-painted signs.

For the next ten years he worked with the Iowa Arts Council’s Artist-in-the-Schools program, completing printmaking residencies in dozens of public schools throughout Iowa. In 1988 he completed his M.F.A. in printmaking at the University of Iowa.

David Kamm began work at Luther College as Gallery Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art in 1989, retiring in 2018. In 1992, Kamm represented Iowa art instructors on a Fulbright project to Russia organized by Iowa State University in Ames, and in 2002 he was selected to participate in a summer institute at Ferrum College in Ferrum, Virginia, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

During spring semester 2007 he served as an artist-in-residence at the Henry Luce III Center for the Arts and Religion at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C., creating work for a project sponsored by the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, Montana, and the Montana Human Rights Commission entitled Speaking Volumes: Transforming Hate. During the summer of 2008 he was selected to participate in the Institute of Lutheran Scholars at Harvard University that explored the theme: Art, Religion and Responsibility. Kamm has also presented papers at several national conferences on art and education, most notably F.A.T.E. (Foundations in Art: Theory and Education) and the College Art Association.

His presentations have been published three times in Fate in Review, the official publication of the F.A.T.E. organization, and he has been listed in Marquis’ “Who’s Who in American Art”. Kamm's work has been in over 120 exhibitions and competitions, including juried exhibits such as the American Color Print Society Annual, Cheltenham Art Center, Cheltenham, PA; the Pacific States National Biennial Print Exhibit, University of Hawaii, Hilo, HI; and Iowa Artists, Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, in addition to being featured in several one-person exhibits around the country. Collections with his work include the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico; the Fine Art Association, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and The Vatican Collection of Modern Art, Rome, Italy.

The Luther College Fine Arts Collection holds several works by Kamm, including Pages From a Small World, Winter Dam, High Frequency Transforming Device, Black Pine, Imperfected Transforming Device, and Keyhole Perspective.