Join us to celebrate the opening of the Tarble’s 2024 Artists-in-Residence exhibition with a live performance by Diane Christensen and Steve Dawson of the band Dolly Varden.   

Dolly Varden is the Chicago quintet built around the singing and songwriting of husband-and-wife duo Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen. Though the band’s name suggests a euphonious connection to a certain country singer, it is actually derived from a rare and beautiful species of trout, which in turn was named after a character in Charles Dickens’s short novel Barnaby Rudge. Strange but true: Dawson and Christiansen both had fathers who were avid fishermen who dreamed of one day catching the elusive Dolly Varden in an icy Alaskan lake.