Chapin studied at private schools and with Gail Sherman Corbett in New York. She established a studio in New York and began exhibiting her work in 1930. In 1934 she went to Paris where she was accepted as the only pupil of the sculptor Mateo Hern ndez. From him she learned the methods of direct carving in wood and stone, a technique about which Chapin later would lecture in the United States. Encouraged in the speciality by Hern ndez, she soon became known for her carvings of animals. She exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and at the International Exposition in Paris in 1937, and at the 1939 New York World's Fair for which she served on the sculpture jury.
Her work was shown at the National Academy throughout the 1940s. A model of her Giant Turtle, which adorns Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, was shown in the Academy annual exhibition of 1941. Chapin was adept at the carving of the human figure as well as animals; her image of a female nude, Awakening (Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.), won the first prize for sculpture in the Pen and Brush Club annual exhibition of 1945. One of her most accessible works, though one not necessarily typical of her oeuvre, is the crucifix she designed to hang above the high altar of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York.
In the early 1940s she and Marion Sanford renovated the former studio of Gutzon Borglum in New York, shared the premises, and developed a close working relationship. In 1952 they established a studio together at Lakeville, Connecticut.
Chapin was the sculptor member of the New York City Art Commission from 1951 to 1953. She was a member of the National Sculpture Society, the Society of Women Artists, and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, among others.
