Claudia Giannini received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from West Virginia University and studied art history and museum education at Penn State, graduating with a Masters in Education in 1981. She has worked in the museum field for more than twenty years, including at the Smithsonian, the Birmingham Museum of Art and The Carnegie Museum of Art. She currently works at the Mattress Factory museum of contemporary art in Pittsburgh where she prepares grant proposals and exhibition catalogues.

Claudia received her Master of Fine Arts degree from West Virginia University in 1999, with specialization in printmaking and photography. She has held residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Virginia Center for Creative Arts and participated in a residency at Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh sponsored by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. The work she created there was i ncluded in an exhibition that travelled throughout the Mid-Atlantic region in 2004/2005. Claudia has exhibited her work widely, including at SOHO20 Gallery in New York, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, the Buckham Gallery in Michigan as well as throughout West Virginia.

Her work combines photographic and printmaking techniques, along with other media such as wax, collage, and handmade paper, to create images that explore our connection to the natural world. She draws personal inspiration from nature and the environment that is so uniquely diverse and abundant in West Virginia.