Cover of the World (People Ask for Flowers While They Live), 1997, has the resonance of a cosmic quilt, complete with an ascendant star centered in the composition like a rising, vital force. The gridded framework references an aerial mapping of the rural landscape of the South, a perspective Dial assumed in many works. More overtly, the work explicitly demonstrates Dial’s interest in Black quiltmaking, specifically the works made by women in the community of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, with whom Dial had a profound connection.

The painting subtly yet unavoidably evokes the rearranged colour scheme of the American flag, and is constructed using carpet: a humble and, by nature, trodden material, suggesting triumph over circumstance, and the ability of people to collectively overcome obstacles posed by social inequity, a thesis echoed in works across Dial's oeuvre.

The Gee's Bend Quiltmakers would go on to become canonised with touring international museum exhibitions introducing their abstract quilts to a global art audience. At the time this painting was made, they were in the midst of a journey towards public recognition parallel to Dial's own. The subtitle of the painting (People Ask for Flowers While They Live) can be read as an invitation to celebrate the unsung heroes of social and cultural revolution whilst they are alive, rather than exclusively in retrospect.