Before there was Alchemy Film Foundation, there was Femina Potens Art Gallery and Performance Space. And before there was Femina Potens, there was a queer kid in from the midwest hungry for connection, community and a place of belonging.

I grew up in the conservative landscape of Southern Ohio. There were many beautiful aspects of my childhood in connecting with the land, climbing trees and being immersed in an enormous family - 27 first cousins just on my father’s side of the family!

But early on in my journey into tweendom I knew I was different. I was experiencing my queerness before I ever had language to describe my identity, before I ever saw my own feelings reflected back to me in art, stories, films, television, or books.

The religious messaging surrounding me as a budding teenager only enforced the ideas that those that veer from the path were broken. And so I hid myself away in books and found comfort and hope in dark black box theaters where my mother would take me to see plays written by Tennessee Williams and William Shakespeare.

I fell in love with the theater, the safe containers of belonging that artistic practices allowed for complex identities and desires, out of the box gender expression, and the channeling of ecstatic joy and deep pain. By 1993 I had started drafting my initial business plan and design for what would become Femina Potens.

Theater was my first love and everything that would follow expanded from that initial seed.

I begged my parents to attend a performing arts high school in downtown Cincinnati, a 30 minute drive each day to and from school. I auditioned for the theater program and received admission. By graduation I had auditioned for multiple college theater programs and was accepted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. My mother, hesitant about my ability to navigate such a big city, deferred to my second choice of Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois.

By 2000, I had founded the organization Femina Potens, which started our first year of programming by performing experimental theater works and performances. By 2001 I was settling into San Francisco and found the first physical spaces for Femina Potens. By 2002, we landed at 465 S. Van Ness Ave. A small gallery space positioned in the Mission District with an alley way entrance.

It was here that Femina Potens programming grew like wild fire. Our volunteer team expanded and every month our programming was bustling with monthly visual art exhibitions, performances, spoken word and literary events, workshops, film screenings, and live music.

Femina Potens was a queer hub for emerging queer and feminist artists of all modalities with a punk rock, DIY, riot grrl vibe. I had created the world that I had dreamt up in my teenage bedroom in Ohio. A queer gallery and performance space where the heroes of my beloved books like Michelle Tea, Annie Sprinkle and poet laureate Diane DiPrima - came together, weaving our stories, our magic, our art, our energy into a tapestry of community and belonging.

In 2007, Femina Potens, moved our ever growing community to a storefront in the Castro at the corner of Sanchez and Market. It was beautiful. No longer were we tucked in a space down an alley, we were a big fish bowl on one of the busiest and gayest corners in San Francisco!

The audiences flowed in to be a part of the movement, to lend a hand, to paint a wall, to read a poem, to buy a zine. Artists streamed in from all corners of the globe to be a part of what we were creating - Margaret Cho, Dave Navarro, Jack Halberstam - the inspiration and the community and momentum kept growing. We were curating programming not only at our own gallery but representing queer and feminist artists through out the city and curating works at community spaces, clinics, stores, cafes, restaurants around the city.

In November of 2010, Femina Potens pivoted. I was pregnant with my first child and my personal contributions of both time and finances, needed to shift to accommodate for growing a family and finding a place of work life balance. Up until this time, I had dedicated the entirety of my life to this work. It was that important to me. But it was taking it’s toll. I needed to nourish my life as an artist and individual if I wanted to continue this radical work in the long run.

The next four years of Femina Potens programming included community partnerships and presenting our programming at spaces like Mission Control, The Center for Sex and Culture, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, CounterPulse, and many others.

In my own creative practice and life I took this time to author three books, write for national publications like Cosmopolitan, Glamour Magazine, Bustle, Romper and the Routledge Porn Studies Academic Journal. I developed and toured a solo theater performance: Reveal All Fear Nothing - through out the country from 2016 - 2019 and then developed a television and feature film production company to elevate the narratives and voices of queer, trans and sex worker communities.

Along the way I also experienced the greatest honor of my life - becoming a mother to two of the most wonderful individuals I’ve ever met. Once again I’m holding space for the expression of self as we uncover the messiness and complex nature of who we are - in parenting and art.

In September of 2022, I was handed the keys once again to 465 S. Van Ness Ave. As I walked through those alley doors, I felt the energy of every artist that ever exhibited at Femina Potens. I felt the power and the impact of every volunteer that painted a wall or worked the door or put up fliers. I felt the energy buzzing through the room of LadyFest 2004 Jello wresting, wild evenings of performance art, the conversations that changed my life, the tears of grief and joy, and I felt 20 year old me in the corner - with a dream, a vision and a community.

This was a space of love. This was a space that had alchemized a community… and me.

At 43 years old, I’m no longer the 13 year old in an Ohio bedroom dreaming up the blueprints for Femina Potens. I no longer need a life raft, an escape hatch.

At 43, I’m no longer the 20year old , scraping quarters for burrito money because I emptied my pockets for a can of paint and nails.

At 43 I’m a queer non-binary femme, a witchy creature who talks to trees and listens to my ancestors, a bad ass manifester, a proud mama that listens to my body before I’ve overdone it, who understand the radical nature of rest, a holder of space, a cancer survivor, and an alchemist.

We are all layered and complex humans and our past, present and future exist beautifully intertwined in each moment.

Alchemy Film Foundation is a portal for transformation. A place where multiple potentialities exist side by side. It is layered and informed by each of our stories that we bring to this space. It is a culmination of all the stories that others have brought to this space in all of it’s incarnations. I look forward to stewarding this space with great love and care and building community with all of you.

- With immense Love and Gratitude,

Madison Arbor Young - Mogul

Artistic Director

Alchemy Film Foundation