She taught photography and artists’ books from 1970–2007 at Rochester Institute of Technology, Tyler School of Art, and the University of Illinois where she is currently professor emerita.

[3] Nettles' work tackles issues of family relationships, woven together with mythology and natural history, often in dream-like juxtapositions.

Art historian Jonathan Fineberg wrote that Nettles' 1970 "Suzanna...Surprised," for example, "demonstrated in the uneven brown-stained surface...the defiant subject matter.... She stuffed this unmistakably confrontational nude self-portrait and sewed it around the edges, then fixed it on to a faint image of a formal garden.

"[5] In her later career, Nettles has excelled in book arts, teaching classes at the School of Information Science at the University of Illinois.

Art historian Jordana Mendelson wrote of these juxtapositions: "When Nettles reuses a photograph from an earlier work and combines these new works with her mother's poetry, we are reminded of core ideas shared between generations in the Nettles family who have made the creative act an integral part of their lives.