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Micheli Oliver

545

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Bio

I am a photographer, filmmaker, activist and future MFA student at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. My graphic design MFA begins this July, 2023. With my work both in my professional career and my education is to facilitate connection with the world we all come from and to help folx fall in love with the land we must protect. I center LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices in all that I do and I work to create intentional safe spaces for honest and joyful storytelling. I look for loud voices that refuse to be silenced, both human and more-than-humans, to paint a story with my camera and now my graphic design work. When I tell a story I do it with compassion, consent and reciprocity understanding the importance of autonomy in personal story. Everything I do is to help bring humxns back toward a relationship with the land and to uplift voices that are so often unheard. I just premiered my debut film "Provide" and have worked as the stills photographer on "Spirit of the Peaks" by WonderCamp and "Who Is a Runner" by Camp4Collective. My photo and writing work is published in Backcountry Magazine, Powder Magazine, Freeskier Magazine, Sisu Magazine and has been featured with Fujifilm, Patagonia, Hydroflask, Solomon, Backcountry, REI and more. With my studies I hope to only grow in my ability to create stories and with an MFA I hope to move my career in major motion pictures as a creative director and/or story producer. Our natural world is my first love and art is my second, I hope to string the two together.

Education

Vermont College of Fine Arts

Master's degree program
2023 - 2026
  • Majors:
    • Fine and Studio Arts
    • Film/Video and Photographic Arts
    • Design and Applied Arts

University of Colorado Boulder

Bachelor's degree program
2017 - 2019
  • Majors:
    • Geography and Environmental Studies

Miscellaneous

  • Desired degree level:

    Master's degree program

  • Graduate schools of interest:

  • Transfer schools of interest:

  • Majors of interest:

  • Not planning to go to medical school
  • Career

    • Dream career field:

      Motion Pictures and Film

    • Dream career goals:

    • Director and producer

      Micheli Oliver LLC
      2022 – Present2 years
    • Editorial photographer

      Micheli Oliver LLC
      2019 – Present5 years

    Sports

    Lacrosse

    Varsity
    2011 – 20176 years

    Arts

    • Micheli Oliver LLC

      Photography
      2019 – Present

    Public services

    • Advocacy

      Protect Our Winters — Storyteller
      2021 – Present

    Future Interests

    Advocacy

    Volunteering

    Philanthropy

    Entrepreneurship

    Mad Grad Scholarship
    Winner
    My name is Micheli Oliver and I am a photographer, filmmaker, graphic designer, writer and hobbyist painter and sketcher. Everything that I do in this life revolves around two things, art and story. I feel drawn to telling stories with art, my medium is motion picture and stills, but I find value in the sharing of the human experience with all forms of art. My personal story began as a little kid, feeling like many kids do, a complete misfit. I remember watching a Christmas movie and seeing the island of misfit toys and feeling akin to them in many ways. As a kid I began to read fantasy books, write stories and paint, it made me feel connected to a world I could imagine, a world where misfits fit in and where you can be anything you want to be. I wrote story after story of a magical world where a misfit kid found their way home. I painted with swirls and bright colors imagining a place that was bright and joyful. The art of creative writing and painting brought me closer to myself and soon I found that what I needed was an outlet for imagination. Imagining a better and more just future through story became my goal and a career soon began to unfold. I got the opportunity to tell stories through the imagery of people with bright imaginations and radical passions for a better world. I told stories with Indigenous leaders, Black activists, Queer spokespeople and everyone in between. As a queer person, myself, I began to feel a little less misfit in this world through my career and the stories and images I was given the privilege to create. With that old Christmas story in mind, my tagline for much of my professional works has been "misfit stories of truth and joy." I live by that sentence and the stories I work to create focus on just that the misfit stories that are not often told that highlight truth, whether it's ugly or not and the joy that we preserve to find. With my photography work, I've meshed together art and activism, story and beauty, technology and environment. Each photo I make and film I dream up, is designed to show the beauty of the human experience and our deep connection to the world around us. Through story and art, I want to bring people back to the land, disconnected kids to the mountains, and mentally ill folks to the ocean, I want to highlight how much people rely on place and the earth. With my design degree, I hope to step into the world of creative design and story producing for major motion pictures. I want to research the ways we have cultivated inherent bias through media and then change that bias through informed media and design choices. I want to work toward films that make misfit kids feel as if they fit and make artistic media that makes the world a better place. More specifically it is my dream to produce stories like the movie "Whale Rider" a story of Indigenous resistance and non-conformity. Currently, I'm working on a short documentary that is called "Selkie" which is the story of a mixed-ethnicity woman in Scotland who is a cold water surfer. This story is exactly the kinds of stories I want to tell, those that revolve around misfit people, with many intermixed identities connecting with the world around them.
    Wild Scholarship
    My name is Micheli Oliver and I am a photographer, filmmaker, graphic designer, writer and hobbyist painter and sketcher. Everything that I do in this life revolves around two things, art and story. I feel drawn to telling stories with art, my medium is motion picture and stills, but I find value in the sharing of the human experience with all forms of art. My personal story began as a little kid, feeling like many kids do, a complete misfit. I remember watching a Christmas movie and seeing the island of misfit toys and feeling akin to them in many ways. As a kid I began to read fantasy books, write stories and paint, it made me feel connected to a world I could imagine, a world where misfits fit in and where you can be anything you want to be. I wrote story after story of a magical world where a misfit kid found their way home. I painted with swirls and bright colors imagining a place that was bright and joyful. The art of creative writing and painting brought me closer to myself and soon I found that what I needed was an outlet for imagination. Imagining a better and more just future through story became my goal and a career soon began to unfold. I got the opportunity to tell stories through the imagery of people with bright imaginations and radical passions for a better world. I told stories with Indigenous leaders, Black activists, Queer spokespeople and everyone in between. As a queer person, myself, I began to feel a little less misfit in this world through my career and the stories and images I was given the privilege to create. With that old Christmas story in mind, my tagline for much of my professional works has been "misfit stories of truth and joy." I live by that sentence and the stories I work to create focus on just that the misfit stories that are not often told that highlight truth, whether it's ugly or not and the joy that we preserve to find. With my photography work, I've meshed together art and activism, story and beauty, technology and environment. Each photo I make and film I dream up, is designed to show the beauty of the human experience and our deep connection to the world around us. Through story and art, I want to bring people back to the land, disconnected kids to the mountains, and mentally ill folks to the ocean, I want to highlight how much people rely on place and the earth. With my design degree, I hope to step into the world of creative design and story producing for major motion pictures. I want to research the ways we have cultivated inherent bias through media and then change that bias through informed media and design choices. I want to work toward films that make misfit kids feel as if they fit and make artistic media that makes the world a better place.