Alexis Joseph lives and works by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. Through Case for Making, her storefront and workshop space, Alexis designs and produces her own line of handmade, pure-pigment watercolors and letterpress watercolor paper goods, and curates a premium quality collection of creative supply basics. Her work as a small business owner intersects art, architecture, design and teaching, and strives to highlight the presence of creative inquiry in multiple forms.

1. How is the notion of Beginning essential and fundamental to your art/work?

Somewhere along the way, most likely when we were all still children, we’re often taught to be fearful of Beginning. Here at Case for Making we feel it is our responsibility to remind people to begin from a place of curiosity, to recommit to a process in which they are deeply interested and to follow that to unknown and exciting places. Each step forward, each move you make, each mark you put down on paper, or every word that you type will help give information to what wants to come next. But only if you’re able to let go of the potentially confining idea of what you want the end result to be. If there is no specific end then there is no specific Beginning.

2. What does Beginning mean to you as a business owner and what opportunities and obstacles did it present for you?

Case for Making began as a small business to anchor my broken heart, something to pour myself into. I didn’t care if it failed because my marriage had already failed and that gave me a sense of permission which felt so freeing. I also had a full time job that I was able to keep which allowed the flexibility and proximity to get my business running and off the ground. I put $5k in inventory on my personal credit card and that felt like an amount I was willing to lose. In the early days, success meant that the doors were open another month and I was able to buy more inventory. As more months kept happening and I kept paying all the bills I was able to hire one person and then another and the parameters for success changed to include: keeping the doors open, buying more inventory and paying my employees. My full time job kept me paid and busy and I wasn’t able to overthink any aspect of the business, each decision was made quickly and intuitively based on the given and relevant information. Since there was no business plan I wasn’t ever tied to any early ideas—the business grew and evolved to be what it wanted to be. We kept doing what was working and let go of anything that wasn’t. We put any extra money or energy into things that felt really interesting, exciting and rewarding to us, which only cemented who we are and what we do. Looking back it makes total sense and goes hand in hand with how we teach and talk about the creative process.

3. What is it like to approach something new and something as nuanced as color pigment?

I never knew how paint was made—after a lifetime of art classes I was completely taken by surprise that all paint is made from pure pigment and binder. This was utterly fascinating for me to discover! Each pigment has such unique inherent qualities and characteristics because they’re all made from something! Pigment can be made by crushing down and sifting natural earth, minerals, biological materials, or even completely made up in a chemistry lab. I had to see how each of them would respond when mixed with binder to make into paint and I had to feel what each of them felt like to paint with on paper. The process connected me back to my own curiosity—I didn’t really care about anything other than just being deeply interested in the fact that color is material. I definitely wasn’t thinking at all that it would become the future of the business.

4. What does Beginning mean from the teacher’s perspective?

If you begin with curiosity there is no way to fail.