Nancy Holt was invited in 1988 to create a work for the campus of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth through the Massachusetts Art in Public Places Program. The university's roots lie in the New Bedford Textile School, where Holt's grandfather, Samuel Holt, taught. This personal connection informed Holt's engagement with the commission, though it was unknown to the commissioners at the time of her invitation.

Spinwinder draws on the textile-manufacturing history of southern Massachusetts. The sculpture consists of six spool-like forms connected by arched tubes to a central cylinder scaled to the body that can be rotated by hand. Recalling her early Buried Poems series, beneath the clay-filled center, Holt buried objects related to the region's textile industry, creating what she described as "a contained place of memory and reflection." Through its rotating mechanism and references to textile production, the work brings together participation, memory, labor, and cyclical systems.