[1] Valerie Dutton Hollister was born December 29, 1939, in Oakland, California; to parents Betty (née Hines) and Gayle R.
[2][3] Hollister was raised in Spokane, Washington and Palo Alto, California; where her parents had been active in the founding of St. Mark's Episcopal Church.
[2] In 1964, she married Robinson G. Hollister, a classmate from Stanford University who became an economics professor.
[9] In 1966, she showed her work alongside artist Eric Rudd at Jefferson Place Gallery.
In 1967, her work was part of the Corcoran Gallery of Arts' juried group exhibit, the 30th Corcoran Biennial;[10][11][6] and she was included in the 1967 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Painting at the Whitney Museum of American Art.