well, how did I get here?
You may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime (1980)
We all start somewhere.
Politically aware and media-hungry from a very young age, Lexy earned a BA in political science in 1983 from Chatham College (now Chatham University) in Pittsburgh. She moved to Washington, DC after graduation, having been stricken by Potomac fever, and took a succession of writing and editing roles with a variety of nonprofits and public affairs publishers, including The Congressional Quarterly Press. She later continued to research and write about society and the public welfare, earning an MA in journalism and public affairs from American University in 2001. During this time Lexy raised a family and dug deep roots in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Alongside this path, design always called.
During childhood, hours spent in her father’s woodworking shop and grandmother’s sewing studio imprinted the logic of systems of construction as well as the gift of early experience in craft, making and materiality. Meanwhile, Lexy’s family moved from the East to West Coasts, down into the Deep South and back East (twice) during her first ten years of life. The dichotomy of mobility and stasis during this period initiated a lifelong search for the soul of place and space.
Later, as a homeowner, Lexy’s experience renovating two pre-war homes served as a laboratory to explore this polarity, using A Pattern Language (Alexander, et al., 1977) as a guide to understanding order, form and light. Two seminal exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, Shaker Design (1986-87) and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend (2004) opened Lexy’s eyes to the sublime power of Shaker simplicity and the Modern mastery of the quilts of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, precedents that continue to hold substantial influence over her design thinking process today.
Lexy tiptoed closer to a career in design, eventually landing a managing position with a small architecture firm in Bethesda, Maryland in the early 2000s. This role gave Lexy an opportunity to work with every part of the design business, except the design itself. She hoped to use this experience to write about design and architecture. Instead, she concluded that it was time to stop chewing around the edges: what she really wanted to do was make design. A series of classes and workshops in woodworking and furniture design secured this desire.
Then after 30 years in the DC area, Lexy used a major life inflection point to make a move down I-95 to the Richmond, Virginia region in 2014. At her husband Robert’s urging, Lexy read The Blue Zones Solution in the summer of 2015, just as she enrolled in VCU’s Interior Design MFA pre-professional program. Using the Blue Zones model as a blueprint for healthy living, Lexy designed an adaptive reuse, mixed use micro-Blue Zone based on the principles of Active Design for her thesis research topic, earning her MFA degree in May 2017.
Starting as an adjunct professor at VCU in fall 2017 and then as a full-time assistant professor in 2019, Lexy taught interior design graphics and studios to undergraduate and graduate students and co-taught the senior seminar. She also taught the Space Research studio in VCUarts’ Art Foundation program, which allowed Lexy to combine her research into Japanese and Shaker design with explorations in sketching, textile art and woodworking.
Lexy continued to pursue research into the principles of Active Design with a commitment to creating healthy and democratic human-centered environments, and earned her WELL AP credential from the International WELL Building Institute in May 2023. To take her commitment to WELL one step further, Lexy became a WELL Faculty member in 2024. In fall 2024, Lexy taught a remote course through VCU’s department of interior design to prepare students to take the WELL AP exam at the end of the semester.
In 2025, Lexy established Alexis Holcombe Design, providing interior design services rooted in healthy and sustainable human-centered design.
Lexy keeps strong ties to the Washington region, frequently visiting her son and daughter, their families and many friends, as well as to Pennsylvania, where most of her extended family still lives. Lexy and her husband, Robert, who has retired from a career as a U.S. foreign service officer, moved from Richmond to Baltimore County, Maryland in 2022. From here they eagerly plan new trips and new opportunities to explore great design and architecture.