She drew inspiration from both the natural world and the lived-in human environment of her neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, emphasizing that art is a reflection of both time and place.

She incorporated rocks, bullet casings, and crack cocaine vials into her works, and found beauty in the resilience of urban plants that some would consider weeds.

Yager's design vocabulary is unusual in invoking "vast and collective networks of reference" that include the historic, the artistic, and the political.

[16] During graduate school Yager was introduced to industrial machinery and began to combine machine and hand techniques to create "objects to hold".

[22] Next, Yager began to combine forms as freely moving elements on distinctive thick segmented chains.

[22][18] Yager gained national acclaim in the 1980s by combining her uniquely textured pillow-forms of 18k gold and sterling silver with water-polished natural stones,[24][2] a juxtaposition that shocked some viewers.

Brightly colored crack vials and caps suggest the pieces of a child's necklace, but also the trade beads used by seventeenth-century traders and slavers.

Yager combines these materials into intricately arranged patterns that pay tribute to Native Americans and enslaved Africans.

"[12]In contrast, Yager's "City Flora" pieces recreate in metals the shapes of plants that persist in living even in a dilapidated urban environment.

[11] The organic forms and enduring materials used in Yager's floral pieces can be seen as providing a necessary balance to the sadness of the "urban stigmata" that she constructs from fragile city flotsam.

This led her to create American Tiara: Invasive Species (2001), a tangle of urban weeds built from sterling silver and gold.

[11][13] The following year, it was included in the major "Tiaras" exhibition at the V&A, among 200 pieces ranging from the 18th century to the present, from punk rock to royalty.

The plants include ragweed, a potato leaf, clover, crab grass, lamb's quarters and a tobacco blossom.

The pieces celebrate new world biodiversity at the same time that they raise issues of monoculture, colonial trade and intercultural domination.

[2] By invoking historic, artistic and political networks of reference, Yager creates objects of both beauty and an unusual depth of meaning.

[44] She has written numerous articles for art metal publications, on topics including the work of metalsmith Phillip Fike,[45] the importance of sabbaticals for studio jewelers,[29] and "the powerful and complementary needs of the patron and the artist".

[49] In 2007, Yager was featured in the Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated PBS documentary series "Craft in America: Memory, Landscape, Community", created by executive co-producer Carol Sauvion.