Phoenix artist’s quilts document the anxieties of our time

For First Friday-goers exploring the Grand Avenue art scene, Phoenix-based artist Wendy Raisanen’s new fine-art quilt exhibition at Five15Arts @ Chartreuse may have you thinking “WTF?!”

But the show aims to leave visitors with a sense of peace.

The exhibition, which opens tonight with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m., was inspired by Raisanen’s “obsession with natural disasters and these insane times of life that we’re living in,” she says.

It captures the “beauty and horror of these times,” as social media users watch human-caused natural disasters and the effects of late-stage capitalism play out on Instagram,” she adds.

“I’m a total Instagram-a-holic and whenever I see these pictures of floors and fires and all this craziness, I’m obsessed,” Raisanen says. “Sometimes these pictures are so beautiful. It’s like the beauty and the horror of these times.”

In Raisanen’s exhibit, aptly titled “WTF?!”, she uses her art to help her process what’s going on in the world. It’s her second exhibit at the small cooperative gallery in downtown Phoenix. In June 2024, she held an exhibition in the same space called “Slut Life” that processed what it’s like being a woman and aimed to reclaim the word “slut” to empower women and assert “my own bodily autonomy,” she says.


After opening Friday night, this latest solo exhibit will run at Five15 until Sept. 28 and be open from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Raiseanen’s signature style of intricate, brightly colored fabric quilts fill the “WTF?!” collection. But this time around, she’s introduced paint into her quilts to depict shipping containers floating away, inspired by a flood in North Carolina, a plantation fire in the U.S. South and other “frustrating events.”

A self-described “long-term optimist” who curses “like a sailor,” Raisanen views her work as embracing the bizarre nature of the current world with the hope that “ultimately, it will be better.”

“The show kind of runs the gamut of shock, horror and peace,” she says.

Five15Arts@Chartreuse is at 1301 NW Grand Ave. Visit the website for more details.