Friends Fair
May 7-9, 2026
⁺₊✧

Aron John Dubois, Sophia Heymans, Amelia Lockwood, Zoë Stiler

Sophia Heymans, The Storm Starters, 2026. Oil, acrylic, molding paste, prairie grass seeds and mop strings on canvas, 50 x 50 x 1½ in.

The Valley is thrilled to participate in the second edition of Friends Fair in Austin, TX. Find us in Room 217 at The Loren Hotel at Ladybird Lake, from May 7-9.

Our presentation includes a selection of works by four artists core to our program: Aron John Dubois, Sophia Heymans, Amelia Lockwood, and Zoë Stiler. Working across ceramic sculpture, painting, and works on paper, these artists explore the mysteries of nature and their relationship to corporeal forms. 


Aron John Dubois (b. 1989, Boulder, CO) is a painter and an internationally recognized tattoo artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A self-taught artist with no formal arts education, Dubois has honed his craft in tattooing, painting, ceramics, and other media by meticulous study and self-directed practice. His work predominantly addresses the enigma of nature, corporeality, and archetypal drama through a lens influenced by art brut, folk mysticism, anthropology, and the grotesque.

Sophia Heymans (b. 1989, Minneapolis, Minnesota) grew up on a family farm in Central Minnesota with her parents, sister, uncles, aunts and cousins and was homeschooled throughout childhood. She became devoted to art-making from an early age and received a BFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. In her paintings she explores the relationship between the land and humankind, seeking to illuminate the personal, meaningful, and mystical relationship we have with the landscapes we inhabit. Sophia lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Amelia Lockwood (b.1990, Stroudsburg, PA) is an artist who primarily works with ceramic to produce sculptures that reference sites of collective exchange: celestial, geological, psychic, and architectural. She received her BFA from Syracuse University (2012), completed post-bac studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder (2016), and received her MFA in Ceramics from The University of California, Los Angeles (2020). She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Zoë Stiler (b. 1978) is a multimedia artist born in Portland, Maine and raised in Taos, New Mexico, where she continues to live and work in an off-grid home built with her own hands on the high desert mesa. She comes from a family of artists and is primarily self-taught. Though she has rarely shown her work, she has maintained an active studio practice throughout her life. Stiler’s work invents and investigates narratives discovered through her experiences and revealed through her dreams.