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[Gwyneth]: Good evening and welcome to Front Street Weekly, Oregon Public Television's news magazine. I'm Gwyneth Gamble. Jim Swenson has the night off. Here's a preview of tonight's stories. Some Asian women have come to the Northwest as a result of listings in bride catalogs. These mail order services may be profiting at the expense of desperate people. [Woman]: Have to go back home, you know, cause I really need the love and affection. You know, the people who cares about me and, you know. [Gwyneth]: We'll visit with Peter Mike Russo and look at his work as an artist and an arts activist. And later tonight, if you hate housework, this Newberg home may be just the thing for you. [Woman]: One person cleaning up another person's dirt. That to me is abhorrent. [Gwyneth]: Currently mail order bride services are helping Northwest men find the so-called ideal woman. In the Portland area alone we know of 13 couples who have married through these controversial services. Beth Willan spoke to some of these couples and files this report. [Josie]: It's just that

I thought that he gonna take good care of me, you know, for the, you know, for the rest of my life and he gonna, well that we gonna love each other, you know, like living in a fairy tale. [Laughs] Live happily ever after. [Beth]: 22 year old Josie Clancy came to Oregon from the Philippines this year with visions of a fairy tale marriage to an American man. She also came with visions of living the good life in the United States. But Josie was not your typical bride. She was a mail order bride. [Josie]: There is in a way the idea you know that Filipinos like to live in like to marry an American cause first of all they want to be here in the United States and you know living here in this country is really great, it's really wonderful. [Man]: It's an opportunity for a man to find a very good mate and that's an opportunity for the wife to come over to the United States. Not

only do women in the Far East want to come here, but I think most of the population would like to come to the United States. [Beth]: It was in one of these mail order bride catalogs called Cherry Blossoms that Josie was first spotted by her future husband Michael Clancy of Beaverton. Michael is one of 1,000 subscribers nationwide that helped Cherry Blossoms make a profit of $60,000 last year. In the Pacific Northwest, Michael's interest in getting a mail order bride is not that unusual. Men in this area have the fifth highest subscription rate to Cherry Blossoms in the nation, according to the publisher. However the number of marriages that result from the service is unknown here. [Man]: I started out last, about a year and a half ago, and I picked up a weekly magazine in Portland which had the Cherry Blossoms ad and I thought that was very fascinating to meet women, a lot of different women, with different. Backgrounds and philosophies. All in one magazine So I subscribed to it as kind of

a lark. [Beth]: It's also not unusual that Asian women are seeking American husbands as a way out of poverty at home. In the Philippines for instance almost 40 percent of the population lives in poverty. The United States has always signified a land of plenty. But the question in the minds of some is whether these legal mail order bride services are profiting at the expense of desperate people. At no cost, women like Josie submit their names, addresses and pictures to this publication. And subscribers like Michael pay $110 for the names and addresses of over 2,000 Asian women. In the case of Josie and Michael, they wrote letters to each other for six months before Michael flew to the Philippines to meet her. Two and a half weeks later they were married. And after four months of married life in Oregon, Michael filed for a divorce. [Man]: Well after the first couple months here I realized that I guess it wouldn't work out.

I wasn't happy in the situation. She was a little bit slow in learning things and. I just kind of realized that I didn't think the marriage was going to work out for the long haul. [Woman 2]: I'm sure that they probably think they're coming over here to the land of riches, but what happens if it doesn't work out and they get a divorce or the man dies? Are they really taking care of? Do they have any ability to fend for themselves once they get here? I don't think in the long run it's doing them a service. [Beth]: Josie ended up moving out of Michael's house and living on her own for three months with no furniture and only a bike for transportation. Knowing some English she was able to get a waitress job at minimum wage. Michael gave her $200 a month, but it was not enough. Last month Michael paid for Josie's flight back to the Philippines because she says she could not make it on her own in Oregon.

[Josie]: I never been, I never been independent in my whole life, But. You know I've been born and raised with my family. I been sheltered and what happened, you know, having to mean right now is really different, really hard. So I guess. You know I said. oh I had enough I. Have to go back home, you know, because I really need the love and affection, the people who cares about me, you know. That is what I wanted. [Man]: Whether they're preying on people or not I don't know. I don't know enough about that, their operation to to make that kind of a value judgment. Again, what we're concerned with is, is the purpose of the marriage to evade the immigration laws? [Beth]: While the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Service is most concerned about mail order brides trying to beat the immigration system. Some Asian

governments are equally worried about the intentions of the American men. A Malaysian woman studying business at Portland State University says mail order bride services are beginning to cause concern in her country. [Woman]: Women are applying to agencies to get foreign husbands and some of them found out that when, once they had reached there, they found out that some of them had to be prostitutes and some of them became housemates. So they wrote back letters to home and this came up in the local newspaper and they were advising women not to do such things because they don't know what they're really in for. [Beth]: Houseman says he does not know of any mail order brides that have turned to prostitution once they got to Oregon, but Oregon is not immune to the problem should the number of mail order brides continue to increase. [Man]: There are some very, I think, clear dangers involved. People can be- You're not always sure what people's motives are, particularly people who- who maybe are going to have the ties themselves, you know, and a magazine or

publication is available for marriage, particularly if the place they want to be married in is the United States. [L.A. Stevens]: And I know that a lot of women have been abused just because, well the guy said well now got you here and you're going to do as I say or else and that's it. Well what can they do? They got no- no friends so to speak or they don't know the ropes and what are they going to do? [Beth]: Seventy five year old L.A. Stevens of Falls City knows of the dangers of mail order bride services, but he supports them anyway. For the past four years he and his 39 year old Filipino wife Dory have been happily married. [L.A.]: I've been married twice before. And both of them turned sour. I'm getting old and so why not gamble, why not try something different?

[Beth]: Stevens says his attitude toward American women changed when his former wives cheated on him. However others say they want Asian brides because they generally are more subservient than American women. [Woman]: Well I think they're exploiting the women, but I think they're also exploiting the men. [Beth]: In what sense? [Woman]: That it probably does not always work out. If it- if it doesn't work out then the man has also lost. An investment not only in finances but in emotions. And so I think it's exploitation all the way around. [Beth]: Exploitation or not, mail order bride services are thriving. While the services boast about the successful marriages, they have no firm statistics on divorce rates or what happens to the women if they are divorced by their American spouses. At this point there is no legal question about mail order bride services, it is simply a moral judgment. [Josie]: I think United States is great. You know, it's different, the

facilities and everything. The Philippines is behind from United States, you know. If he could give me another chance yes, that would be great. I mean, I'm going to do my best, you know, to work the marriage, but I guess it so late now that I gotta go back to Philippines, you know. [Gwyneth]: Incidentally, the publisher of Cherry Blossoms, John Broussard, started brainstorming his mail order bride service business in a remote wilderness area of Washington. Now in Hawaii, he says he plans to expand his catalogs to include European women. Well, painter Mike Russo has long been active in making art a more visible part of Northwest culture. His work as an arts activist has changed the face of Portland by placing art in public places. But Russo has also been important to the Northwest as a working artist. Recently a retrospective exhibit brought together pieces by Russo that spanned 40 years of his painting.

[Russo]: What you're doing in the present and work that you show is always the most recent work and therefore the old paintings never really seem to live and an introspective is a time when these paintings are brought back to life and you're able to see them. [Gwyneth]: In 1979 Marylhurst College first opened its art gym gallery with work by Michael Russo. Five years later, a Russo retrospective celebrates both the gallery's success, exhibiting Northwest artists, and forty years of work done by Russo in Portland. The display shows not only the change in the artist's style, but the strong continuous thread that runs through a lifetime of works. Described as controversial, confrontational and

paradoxical, Russo's work is at once simple and complex. Russo explores the life within the human form using a style that is his alone. [Russo]: From my own observation, my paintings have always kind of disturbed people. And I know one man came to me once and said, you know your paintings disturb me so much. He says, I see myself in them. And I thought that was a very interesting kind of comment. The paintings were saying something that was- that was very personal and very vital, which upset him and I thought that was a very good comment actually. [Gwyneth]: In addition to a life devoted to drawing the human figure, Russo has served as an arts activist for most of his years in the West. In the 50s, he founded the Portland chapter of Artists Equity, an advocacy group.

He served on the city's Metropolitan Arts Commission and helped initiate the one percent for art program that has succeeded in putting art works in numerous public places. In the 70s he saw the need for exposure to art being produced in New York and other art centers and so helped found the Portland Center for Visual Arts. [Russo]: As a nation, both historically and otherwise, we have not really supported the arts, as the arts have been supported traditionally in Europe, for example. But I will say this. We are fast. Reaching a point of Consciousness that the arts are very very important and very Healthy and very important part of the environment of a community. [Gwyneth]: Russo was born in Connecticut in 1909 to Italian immigrant parents. In the 30s he attended Yale art school, where he first sought to break away from longstanding art traditions to create contemporary works. In 1947 he came to Portland

with his wife, painter Sally Haley, to teach at the museum art school, now called the Pacific Northwest College of Art. A student there, Arlene Schnitzer, turned out to be one of his biggest supporters. He encouraged her to start a gallery and in 1961 Schnitzer opened the Fountain Gallery with works by Russo. The Fountain Gallery still represents Russo's work today. Schnitzer has seen Russo's work evolve over the last 25 years. [Arlene]: Yes, I think Mike has always devoted and committed his art to the human form and outside of basic construction of the paintings, the lines, the line drawing, he has remained faithful to this commitment and shown that in every form. I think one of the first things that intrigued me about his painting was the way everything is painted out and painted out. All of the non-essentials,

you know, everything that doesn't have to be there is gone. And I look at those blank faces and the faces there for me and the the lines of the body, they're there even though he's painted them out and reduced it to the most simple, direct communication to me about this human form. I like paintings that demand something of me, that don't show me everything there is in five minutes and sink into the wall. Mike's paintings never do that. He has in some ways idealized the figure. And yet there are other times when I feel that some of his renditions of the figure go right into my soul and that he, you know, how- how could he know so much about me? That's how I relate to the paintings. [Gwyneth]: Mike first works out his ideas on paper as sketches, sometimes from a model. He

then takes them to canvas as the basis for larger paintings. [Russo]: Drawings seem to be a source through which you experiment and actually expands ideas and things that eventually become paintings. I have sketches, a number of sketches, that exist as an idea already and the drawings are a clue as to what the painting is going to be. So I have around me always a very large number of drawings that I'm always working. [Gwyneth]: In 1981 Portland publisher Jim Begony collected 100 of Rousseau's pen and ink drawings and released them in a book called The World of Russo. To introduce the pictures, Begony commissioned essayist Jane Van Cleave, former editor of Stepping Out magazine. Van Cleave has interviewed Russo extensively. [Van Cleave]: It's been amazing. It's been amazing because I think that you can read all kinds of things about the creative process, but when you spend as much time as I

have spent with Mike, and you walk into his studio and you see him painting these big forms, it seems like he's in a dream. He's working on a kind of radar that cannot be described. I mean you can describe the objective result, you can describe the painting, but the process is quite mysterious. Very faithful, very intense, very private. [Gwyneth]: Artist George Johannsen is another person who has closely observed Russo's work. Johansen first studied under Russo at the Art Museum School and later returned there to work beside him on the faculty until Russo retired in 1977. [Johansen]: There's no doubt that Mike has had a tremendous impact on art in the Northwest, both through his teaching and through the- through his very strong paintings. I can't think of anyone that ever came out of my classes painting like Mike, you know, but- and yet they came out of there with a very strong feeling about what art could be and the kind of power that art could have and that's a very

important thing to give students. [Gwyneth]: The retrospective opened on a summer night with a banquet called Ribs, Ribbon and Russo. In addition to honoring the artist, the event benefited the Marylhurst exhibition program. [Johansen]: If you consider some of the things that painting can do in terms of texture and- and lots of color and lots of light and dark and so on, you kind of realize what- what sort of things Mike has deliberately taken out of the painting in order to give it really more simplicity and more, essentially more power. [Russo]: I'm very much interested in the, you might say, the way a painting is constructed and put together. The architecture of the painting. So I probably piece it together like. You would put together a structure and I have never shared or

participated in that kind of Thought that the abstract art and figurative art are represented opposite polls. [Gwyneth]: According to Russo, the individual's universal qualities are more important to depict than specific things that may give one a sense of familiarity. It is on this aspect of his work that critics do not always agree. Oregonian art critic Allan Hiwakawa, for example, claims that Russo his work is now done at a formula level and that it resembles cartooning rather than well-developed portraiture, but the same qualities also bring praise. [Woman]: I like the clean lines that he does with his figurative work. I think it's just marvelous and it's very humorous and it gives me a giggle and we all need a giggle now. [Man]: Highly stylized and kind of a unique statement about the human condition. what people do with people. [Woman]: I think he has a very distinctive style and it's nice to see the evolution of that style from a looser,

softer technique to the kind of crisp style that he has now. It's a beautiful show. [Gwyneth]: Russo is only beginning to receive national attention. The Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C. selected his work for a traveling exhibit, and the Smithsonian Institution included Russo in an oral history project concerning people who have influenced the arts in their communities. Yet there's no question he's well recognized locally. [Woman]: I would imagine that he would paint the same kind of paintings if he lived in New Jersey or Italy. So he's created a very special kind of work that we can now claim as part of our tradition because it- it- it developed in our place. But it's really his work. [Gwyneth]: But it's not only his work that people value. [Arlene]: Mike is important. The man is important. His entire life of dedication and devotion to the arts, both personally and on paper and canvas. He's lived the life of a committed,

dedicated worker for the arts, as a committed, dedicated person to his community and to life. [Gwyneth]: Mike Russo's most recent works are on display at the Seattle Center, now through December 15th, as part of a continuing series on Northwest artists. And finally tonight, Rhonda Barton brings us the story of an inventor who believes she has the answer to every homemakers prayers. [Rhonda]: Down this dirt road in Newberg is Francis Gabe's house. A house that's not like anything you'll find anywhere else. It's not just the cinder block walls or the colored plexiglass windows that set it apart. It's what's inside that's had folks around here buzzing. [Francis]: Newberg here, it was divided down the center. Half of Newberg thought that I was crazy and the other half thought I was a genius.

[Rhonda]: That's because Gabe has spent 30 years trying to invent what every housewife dreams of: a self-cleaning house. She started because she was spending too much time picking up after her two kids and husband. [Francis]: It was a real bummer to deprive the kids of me in exchange for doing dishes or washing clothes. It still seems a crime. [Rhonda]: This is a model of what Gabe has come up with. It features 68 of her own patented inventions, devices she says that will let you scrub the whole house, furniture, pets and all, with the flick of a switch. [Francis]: There'll be no more one person cleaning up another person's dirt. That to me is abhorrent. Why should I clean up yours instead of you mine or however. No, that's wrong. That's demeaning. Especially the bathroom, I think. That's horrible. [Rhonda]: So what's Gabe's solution?

[Francis]: All right, this is the self-cleaning dressing, bath and laundry room. [Rhonda]: This room, and all the others in Gabe's unfinished house, will have ceiling nozzles that squirt out soapy water, baseboard heaters dry it up. [Francis]: Both of them inject first a soak cycle, pardon me, then a soap or detergent cycle, and then a rinse cycle, and then blow hot- warm forced air for drying. [Rhonda]: So it sounds like a car wash only it's inside the house. [Francis]: Rather- and the car wash of course has all of this whirling scrub apparatus. This does not. [Rhonda]: How do you keep the water from just collecting on the floor and gobs of dirt clumping up in the corners? [Francis]: Good question. Every room has a controlled slope to the floor, every room has a drain that does not show. [Rhonda]: Mesh lined drawers let fuzz and hair fall through to the floor where they're washed down the drain.

The furniture is mounted on the wall so it doesn't get in the way, and you don't have to worry about the wood finish because it's specially treated. There's even Gabe's waterproof upholstery. [Francis]: People have asked me many times what they would do with their antiques. The bed is put together with all resin glue, the same as the cabinets were in the bathroom, and will be in the kitchen, and there are eight coats spar varnish on all the surfaces. This makes them, it makes them absolutely impervious to soap, water or whatever. And the bedding, the bedding only is covered in this house, nothing else, and that is done by bringing, there's a roller back under in here and- with a plastic cover on it. It's just like a big window shade. [Rhonda]: Your bedside novel goes in the waterproof telephone cabinet. The bedroom windows are yet another Gabe invention. [Francis]: Here are the, I call a window glide.

When I want to open this window I simply do this. However I do have one on either side of the window like this. And you pull them both the same time. Those work very well. This is my book cover. It's a real seedy one. I didn't have the right materials for it. And always remember, these are prototypes. You can leave your books laying any place you want to. I'm expecting to have these put out in so many in a package and sold in a dime store, you know, so that people can just use a lot of them with no sweat about it. [Rhonda]: Worried about your knick knacks? Gabe's solution is sealing them up in her special windows. [Francis]: You don't have to dust them. I don't like to dust those little bitty things, besides you're always breaking them. [Rhonda]: The 69-year-old great grandmother also doesn't like to put away dishes, hence the cupboard dishwasher. [Francis]: It will set on the counter, you see, so you don't have to stoop anymore. And when you- it is actually your cupboard. [Rhonda]: Then there's a rubberized self cleaning sink, the Gabe waterproof kitchen

canisters, and a self-cleaning closet equipped with nozzles. [Francis]: It was designed mainly for the people who change the clothes every day. They don't really get soiled, they're just a bit mussed and this will freshen them for them. There's a little platform here you stand on that, open the doors and hang your clothes up on a hanger, the soiled clothes. And you punch a button, when you come back they are washed and dried and hanging in the closet. [[Rhonda]: Let's not forget the self-cleaning fireplace either, which washes its own ashes out of a trap door into the garden. How do you know that all these things that we've been seeing actually work? [Francis]: Because I have tested them. All of them have been tested, every precious one of them. Again and again and again, lab tested. Now I am testing in the full- scale house here. And just as soon as I'm through here, believe me they're going to be on the market. [Rhonda]: Someday Gabe envisions whole subdivisions of self-cleaning houses and if they look a little bit different from your average shag carpeted ranch house, Gabe says

people will get used to the change. [Francis]: It will still have pictures on the wall. It will still have the family portrait on the piano. It will still have everything we have now, minus the worry about kids, for heaven's sakes, don't make another mess. I can't stand to clean up anymore. It won't matter because it'll be so easy to clean it up. [Gwyneth]: Well Gabe estimates she has spent $17,000 on her prototype house. She says she'll be ready to market copies of the house next year and so if you're interested she's looking for business partners to help get that venture off the ground. And I guess we've gotten this venture off the ground. That's all for Front Street Weekly tonight. Now we'll not be with you next week due to special programming during Winter Festival 84, so we'll see you in two weeks. Good night. [Music]