Ferne Jacobs started work on Snow Circles while her mother was dying. The title was inspired by James Joyce's short story "The Dead," in which one character, Gabriel, watches snow fall on the Irish landscape and muses how it covers both the living and the dead. The circles within the woven walls of this vessel symbolize the cycles of life and are connected to show that one cycle moves onto the next, as a mother gives life to her children, who survive her passing. The folds and curves of the fabric evoke Jacobs's description of her baskets as "a place for breath, or for wind." ("Ferne Jacobs: The Will of the Weave," Angeles Magazine, May 1991)