[this post is the third in a series of guest posts we'll be sharing from our summer correspondent in copenhagen, brittany watson]

After a textile blitz/inspiration-overload tour to Sweden and Finland, I felt a bit bittersweet returning to Copenhagen. All it took was a little trip to illustrator Helle Vibeke Jensen‘s studio to cheer me right up. Helle is one hell-of-a lady (sorry, that was just too easy)! Check it out: she studied fashion design at the Danish Design School, worked in fashion for about 10 years, became an illustrator, co-owns a cable surfing park in Copenhagen with her family. Awesome right?

CLICK HERE for the rest of brittany’s post after the jump!

Her studio is fixed right on the border of the free/hippy community called Christiania (which is worth a home tour in itself.) The space is shared with other artists in the community and she says it feels more like a family. In fact, her son created the desk system she uses consisting of two leveled table tops affixed on their sides to the wall and then suspended with cables to the ceiling to create more floor room in the little one-roomed space. She has also maximized the small space with a multi-leveled string/clip system attached to the ceiling that displays her work and allows her to set up her storyboards for her projects. (top image above)

Helle is a wiz when it comes to organization. She showed her kajillion sketchbooks from her travels all over the world and the notebooks and boxes she uses to sort out her inspiration pieces. The archive system she’s created is used daily as her process for her illustrations for books and posters is more collage over drawing. Her illustrations have an updated Dr. Seuss feel with a spot of Japanese flavor, easily seen in the rug she’s designed.

It’s rare to find an artist who says “yes, please take pictures. Nothing here is a secret.” How refreshing! It encapsulates Helle’s free-spirit attitude towards life and the creative process: open, collaborative, and imaginative.

until next week, brittany

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About Brittany: Brittany Watson grew up teething on the seaweed of Southern California while surrounded by a musician/artist family (minus a businessman father.) Her mother’s favorite quote was “a creative mess is better than tidy idleness” and so her childhood was spent creating art work, music, and yes, lots of messes. Her father thought she should study law while her mother though she was better suited as an artist so she chose a happy median, art history. On her way to becoming a museum curator she was haunted by those creative messes and enrolled in permanent “creative mess status” otherwise known as a master’s in interior design at the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington, DC. Now in her second year she has worked with professional creative messers during her spare moments including summer gigs with Jonathan Adler and Celerie Kemble in NYC. There she designed products for Tiffany and Co., Schumacher, and Dempsey and Carroll and helped create beautiful interiors for fancy schmancy penthouses. She can currently be found earning a sore bum from miles of cycling around the city of Copenhagen while studying textile design and writing her graduate thesis on what else…design blogs!

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