In 2003 she was awarded The Arts Foundation Fellowship for Textile Design. She trained in painting and woven textiles, worked as a designer and colourist in industry and made numerous knitted costumes for TV, dance and film. She gained her Doctorate at the Royal College of Art in 1995. Her research into conductive fibres and materials were incorporated in a collaborative project with the ‘Design for Life’ team at Brunel University facilitating a ‘Talking Waistcoat’ for the disabled. This was followed by a three-year consultancy with Philips Research where her discoveries laid the foundations for their work with wearable electronics.
The electroplating of textiles has become her signature and with her partner Ron Geesin they made three interactive sound and light textile panels for The Challenge of Materials Gallery at the Science Museum. She applies her knowledge of materials and processes as an expressive medium through which she articulates ideas, concerns and aesthetics and collaborates with others when appropriate. All her work is textile based. Most of the materials she uses are thermoplastic. Many are sourced from industry and have conductive properties. She is interested in up cycling textiles thus benefiting the environment and our current landfill burden.
She has exhibited and lectured in the UK, Europe and Japan: the exhibitions 'Revelation - Textile artists addressing issues’ and 'Through The Surface' both toured the UK concluding at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; ‘Artists at Work - New Technology in Textile and Fibre Art’, Prato, Italy; ‘Fashion In Motion', at the V&A; 'Slipstitch', Dutch Textile Museum, Tilburg; ‘Meet the British Crafts’, Ozone Gallery, Tokyo; ‘Ever & Again’, Chelsea College of Art, London.
The desire to further reveal the seemingly invisible has led her to study and interpret some of the discoveries in the field of nanomedicine, or molecular medicine. New medical imaging technologies reveal a depth and layering not possible with standard photography. These micro-actions seem to represent so much of her philosophy and practice that she has, as it were, made companions with them and this is reflected in her current work. She is working with scientists exploring Nanotechnology and interpreting their electron microscopic images, contributing through her practice to demystifying nano science. This work has been shown at: The EuroNanoForum, Edinburgh; Nanotechnologies & Smart Textiles for Industry & Fashion at The Royal Society, London and; ‘Inspired by Nano’, at The Grapevine Contemporary Gallery, Norwich.