Dianne Chapman is a Florida-based explorer, educator, and the creative force behind Arty Girl Designs, where she specializes in Deep Time Mixed Media Mosaics. She creates tapestries of time out of the Earth’s hidden treasures, merging her passion for adventure with a deep respect for natural history. A lifelong adventurer, Chapman’s process is rooted in field exploration; she paddles and sifts Florida’s riverways—primarily the Peace River—wades into the Gulf for coastal finds, and hikes inland terrain. Whether she is digging for crystals in Arkansas, splitting Utah slate to reveal hidden trilobites, or uncovering Florida and South Carolina prehistoric bones and teeth, her work celebrates the treasures that wait beneath the surface for anyone willing to look.
For Chapman, the core of her practice is the profound, almost incomprehensible moment of discovery: uncovering a treasure that has never been seen or touched by human hands in millions of years. She operates with a deep respect for the land, holding all appropriate permissions and permits for her explorations. In her Arty Girl Designs studio, she maintains a vast "Material Library" that serves as a treasure-hunter’s laboratory. Here, these first-touch relics are woven together with lithic coral flakes, golden calcite clams from Rucks Pit, ancient shells, and weathered driftwood. Her palette is further enriched with smalti, stained glass, beads, and reclaimed artisan ceramics. Within each mosaic, the mortar serves as the bond for this atypical juxtaposition, holding these incongruous eras and textures together to effectively create a new life for that which was once extinct or even nonexistent.
Her Stratal Series—a ten-layer stratigraphic quadriptych cultivated through the #100DayProject—resulted from her choice to challenge herself and dig deeper into new creative ideas. With a background in Art Education and a career in Early Childhood Development, Chapman uses her work to spark that same sense of "first-time discovery" in adults that she fosters in children. She invites the viewer to engage their own inquisitiveness and contemplate the endless possibilities of what is still waiting to be discovered beneath our feet. Because at the end of the day, "I dig art."
