She is best known for Peggy and Fred in Hell, an episodic film experiment that has been shot and released over a 20 year period (1984-2004). It is a post-apocalyptic survey of two young children scrambling through the detritus of late twentieth century culture, and is disturbingly prescient of the America of today. A significant biographical fact is that Thornton was a child of the Cold War and the Sixties, growing up with a father and grandfather who both worked on the atom bomb. She has exhibited worldwide, in such venues as The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Biennial Exhibition, Centre George Pompidou, Rotterdam Film Festival, NYFF, the Buenos Aires Film Festival and the Pacific Film Archives.