Co-owner, with her husband Marcus Piña, of Garde Rail Gallery (4860 Rainier Ave S, 721-0107).
Light and Piña are the curators of Across the Miles: Discovering Folk Art in America.

What is it that draws people to folk art?

"Southern work seems very exotic to people who don't live there. It is a really different cultural thing. So people are fascinated that we go down to these really rural places, get the art, meet the artists. And we explain about these artists and what they do, and where their motivation comes from, and that it doesn't have anything to do with the art world--it really appeals to people."

What drives the artists to make work?

"The work comes from such a different place. They have to do it. Sometimes it's more of an obsessive thing. A couple of artists do what's almost like automatic writing. There's Zeebeede Armstrong, who lived in a small town in Georgia; he lived to be 98, I think. He was totally obsessed with the end of the Earth, and when time was going to stop. So he'd make these clocks, over and over again, and call them doomsday clocks.... Then there's the urge to do it because it's a divine thing, and you find that a lot in the South. That's what we call visionary art--it's the hand of God that creates it. There are artists who realize after doing it for themselves that people enjoy and appreciate the art so much, that they can't not do it. Jimmy Lee Sidduth is one of those. He's 91, and still does about four paintings a day."

Do you think David Lee Roth would like folk art?

"He'd love it! It has a kitsch factor he'd be into. He's gotta love Tom D.'s Beauty Queens--they're voluptuous, right out of a David Lee Roth video."