Invite the Cloud In

August 5–29, 2026
Blackfish Gallery
Portland, OR

"I just feel like there's a big cloud off in the distance, looming large."
"Well, Hannah, why don't you invite the cloud in?"

Invite the Cloud In explores the difficult act of turning toward what feels overwhelming. Created during a period of profound personal change, these layered abstract works emerge from an ongoing process of grief, loss, and reorientation. The end of a significant relationship becomes not only a present rupture, but an opening into older landscapes of attachment, memory, and survival.

Working with transparent materials suspended in layers, along with monochromatic ink and paint, Theiss builds abstract visuals that shift as the viewer moves. Forms appear and dissolve, obscuring and revealing one another. The works inhabit a space of uncertainty, where clarity and confusion, presence and absence, coexist. Rather than offering resolution, Invite the Cloud In seeks to give form to emotional landscapes that resist articulation. Through scale, transparency, and accumulation, the work invites viewers into states of unease and recognition, where what feels unnameable is briefly made visible.

Show Length

August 5–30
Wednesday–Sunday, 11–5pm
Blackfish Gallery

Opening Reception

Thursday, August 6, 5–8pm

Artist Talk

Sunday, August 16, 2pm

Meet the Artist at




Blackfish Gallery

Sunday, August 16, 11–5pm
Saturday, August 22, 11–5pm
Sunday, August 23, 11-5 pm

I’ll be at the gallery during these opening hours to talk about my work one on one.