“Fault Flour” was created in June 2017 during a two-week artist residency at the San Gabriel National Monument in California, situated on the San Andreas Fault. This work is part of an ongoing series of site-specific video performances called “Earth Rituals” and has had incarnations in New Mexico, Vermont, and California. “Earth Rituals” unify contemporary art practices with natural phenomena, investigating the ever-shifting human relationship to nature and its elements. “Fault Flour” is concerned with the earth. In this case, the earth is unstable. She is divided into lines, breaking up, splitting apart, torn into sections, trying to hold center. “Fault Flour” derives its name from a type of rock with extremely small grain size that can be found along the fault zone. This type of rock, which has the consistency of fine baker’s flour, is the result of the grinding and milling that occurs when two sides of a fault line move against one other. In this ritual, fault flour is gathered from one area in the San Andreas Fault zone and spread along 200 feet of highway in another area, much the same way fault plates have shifted over time.