notNeutral x Michael Engebretson Lino Mug - "Class Five"

*Limited Edition*

notNeutral partnered with Interact Center for Visual & Performing Arts, a visual arts studio and theater company dedicated to artistic excellence, radical inclusion, and challenging perceptions of disability. At Interact, artists with and without disabilities collaborate as equals, inspiring audiences to explore the full spectrum of human potential.

notNeutral worked closely with Interact’s gallery team to select works by three artists, adapting their original illustrations and paintings to design three limited-edition Lino mugs. A portion of sales will be paid as royalties to the artists and to Interact to advance their mission to support the creative growth of artists with disabilities.

About the Artist: Michael Engebretson

Michael Engebretson's kaleidoscopic drawings, paintings, and sculptures map a future existence beyond Earth, where inhabitants travel through galaxies by spaceship and live on distant moons in a utopian civilization he calls Class Five. “Their society is far more advanced than us. They are more free thinking than we are.” says Engebretson. The space vessels that Engebretson draws and the ideology they represent are the vehicles of a more equitable time and place. He has continued this body of speculative fiction for over 15 years.

An avid autism advocate, Engebretson would like viewers of his work to understand how, as he says, “the autistic mind operates.” He describes the way that his brain works as “just like a cyborg: part human, and part machine,” and he hopes that his work will help people to understand the vitality of neurodiversity.

Engebretson was the inaugural artist in residence at Interact Gallery in 2022 and the second artist to hold a solo exhibition at Interact Gallery in 2023. He was named a Guest Artist by the Creative Enterprise Zone in the 2023 Chroma Zone Mural & Art Festival. In addition to Interact, he has presented work at Art Enables in Washington, D.C., Make Studio in Baltimore, MD, HGA Architects & Engineers, and Gamut Gallery. In 2021, he was a key contributing artist and performer in Zoomtopia, Interact's first virtual theater production and companion exhibition.