Dubhe Carreño, founder of This Quiet Dust Ceramics, hails originally from Venezuela. Since the 1990s, however, she has resided in the United States, transitioning from the field of professional dance to ceramics – first as a gallery owner and dealer, and eventually a full-time artist and producer – as a young adult.
Carreño received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago; today, she and her family reside in Northbrook, Illinois, where she crafts handmade porcelain ceramics out of her home studio. Carreño also works as a ceramics instructor at Northeastern Illinois University, passing along her talent to a new generation of artists and craftspeople.
Founded in 2013, This Quiet Dust Ceramics is known for artist Dubhe Carreño’s organic, minimalist approach to functional porcelain kitchenware. She brings the skillful fluidity learned through many years of upper-level dance to her ceramics craft, introducing elements of stillness and motion to each piece through subtle alterations to symmetry and line. As quoted in a 2017 issue of Ceramics Monthly, Carreño explains that it was “the delicate relationship between anticipation, tension, rhythm, quietness, and movement needed to create a very specific aesthetic; and the way that every line and contour delivers a very precise expression” that initially drew her to the discipline of ceramics.
“Clay teaches me to listen, to be patient, to spend time doing a job right, to be present minded and to observe myself, to not judge too quickly, to accept, and to not be attached.”
Tableware from This Quiet Dust is thrown from mid-range-temperature porcelain and fired in an oxidation atmosphere kiln. The resulting bowls, plates, mugs, spoon rests, and other pieces are beautiful, sturdy, and easily cleaned either by hand or in the dishwasher.