Coffey became interested in social issues as an outgrowth of her pacifism. She volunteered on behalf of anti-war, veterans, environment, Native American and civil rights campaigns in Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and New York City where her work led her to Asian, Native American and Afro-American cultures. 

Coffey’s artworks have been shown in over 50 art shows in ten different states, including both coasts and three different cultures. Her popular thematic shows include Nameless Ones of the Prairie, a show on the elderly pioneer descendants, and Listen to the Children, a multicultural look at the world of future adults. Currently she is using historic photographs as a subject matter for her paintings in conjunction with the Omaha Tribal Historical Research Project, Inc. under the mentorship of Umoⁿhoⁿ, Dennis Hastings, MA.  She has won awards for her artwork twice from two different cultures: the Nebraska Association of American Mothers Inc. and the Wo-o-bi Fine Arts Club at Winnebago, Nebraska on the Winnebago of Nebraska Indian Reserve. Coffey has participated in 20 invitational or juried shows to date and has served as an art judge twice, again for two different cultures, Euro-American and the Umo ⁿhoⁿ of Nebraska and Iowa Indian Reserve.

Working primarily with oils, Coffey’s repertoire includes a vast variety of mediums. Using oil with her "collage on cardboard" works, Coffey delves into experimental artistic expression reserving her oil and canvas works for more traditional themes. Organic sculpture pieces round out her portfolio along with graphic art done in India Ink, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, and colored pencils.

Coffey’s specialty has been her unique organic installation pieces. Comprised of both art pieces and found objects placed upon multi-levels, Coffey creates an artistic environment to set a mood for contemplation, making her work profoundly inner active as it combines both artworks and social commentary through the artifacts discarded by the dominant cultue.

Many return to Coffey’s exhibitions, bringing others with them, her shows eliciting strong emotions out of viewers, reducing any number to tears. Some are shocked by what they see, and like many other artists, Coffey’s work has been banned by those who fear a challenge to their own belief systems, but curiously, only in her home state of Nebraska -- some half dozen times in a dozen years.  Her current series of window displays against the war in Iraq have literally been attacked by local critics of her politics.  See Censorship.

Coffey’s 1990 work The Mounting of Jesse’s Girl, a performance art piece on rape, was rejected sight unseen by Alliance, a small Nebraska Panhandle town of 6,000, but debuted by special invitation at a citywide Art Fair held one year later in the state’s own capital City of Lincoln, population 200,000. 

Considered by some to be a "naïve" or "unschooled" artist of the Outsider School, Coffey’s work actually reflects many schools of art, beginning with the Northern European Expressionists, working through Social Expressionism, and including the great Mexican muralists, especially Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo. Coffey’s work has always been heavily influenced by Native American artists and the prairie itself as both inspiration and teacher.

Using unconventional materials as well as the traditional artist’s media, Coffey has created her own organic expressionism in color and texture, reflecting her life on the high plains and the multicultural experience of America. She is an artist’s artist.

Coffey’s writing and illustrations have appeared in newspapers, as well as national and international magazines. She produces poetry and prose in varying lengths. Coffey’s performance pieces come out of her theatrical schooling using poetry and drama to accent her art works.

Her silk screen designs have been popular in many states and a national trade show. She was co-owner and primary artist for the T-shirt Trap in New York City in the early 1980s.

In 2003 Coffey was successfully operated upon for Breast Cancer.  While she won't be officially in remission until 2008, she has had no reason so far to feel that it won't occur.  "Breast Cancer is epidemic now which ought to scare every one into doing something about the pollution in our earth, air and water," she states, "but unfortunately our government seems more interested in killing people than in saving them."

In 2004 Coffey became a Newberry Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago where she studied the collection of Omaha and the five cognate tribes collections as part of the requirements for a Masters Degree at Western Institute for Social Research which she received in May 2006.  She is currently working on her PhD.  Coffey returned to college to pursue graduate degrees to further her work among the Omaha.

"Art and language are two important communication tools," Coffey states, "in aboriginal cultures they are seen as sacred, a form of prayer. Each are important to the culture in which they developed. The roots of a people’s history lie deep within their language and their arts. By studying them both, the modern world can touch base with the wisdom of their elders directly."

It is the interest she has in both the written and the visual as well as her constant studies of the wisdom of many cultures, present and past, that makes Coffey’s work unique.

"Irish storytelling is an art form growing out of an ancient oral tradition. I find it highly compatible with Native American and African oral heritages. We are all one, no matter how we define our differences. We all involuntarily share the experience of birth and death." Coffey relates.

"My father’s Druidic ancestors were a form of medicine man — all artists within their own culture. My mother’s people came from a long line of needle workers and teachers. I am simply picking up a family trade and taking it to a new place."