Howardena Pindell drew on many sources for the form of this work, including African textiles' unstretched format and their open designs, which she notes can "expand and contract, inhale and exhale." However, the content came from a car accident that caused her to experience periodic memory loss. Writing recollections on postcards, Pindell used these memories as source material for her abstract, flickering artworks. One childhood memory is telling. Stopping for root beer on a drive through Kentucky in the 1950s, she asked her father why there were red circles under their mugs: "He said, 'That's because we're black and we cannot use the same utensils as the whites.' I realized that's really the origin of my being driven to try to change the circle in my mind, trying to take the sting out of that."

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