WovenLore

Christian Dauble (they/them) is a trans-nonbinary craftsperson, scholar, and musician currently living in St. John’s, NL. Originally from Dunedin, Florida, they moved to Newfoundland in 2017 to pursue a masters and PhD in music and folklore (ethnomusicology), with a special interest in masculinity, whiteness, and colonialism in Scottish Highland bagpiping. After years of studying and performing as a musician, Christian became enthralled with the world of craft and fibre arts at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now a weaver, knitter, spinner, and dyer, Christian is committed to engaging with craft as a mode of community building and sustainability.

My work in textiles is deeply rooted in my background as an academic and musician. I am interested art as process, practice, and study. Years of classical training as a pianist as well as a formal traditional training in many different music cultures led me to understand that a piece is never finished. For music, the art is in the practice room, which in turn is expressed in various ways during performance. As I have begun my work as a textile artist I have transferred that emphasis on practice and process. This orientation toward process has led me to focus on a holistic understanding of fibre arts and textiles. Weaving and knitting require knowledge of different types of yarns and thread, which require an underlying knowledge of spinning and how various types of fibres interact with themselves, each other, as well as other variables such as dye. I take this holistic approach to fibre arts as a form of re-skilling. By educating myself and others about what were once common place skills, I aim to disrupt colonial capitalist structures in modern life.