Fresh Start With Art

Marga Fripp's Gallery Helps Immigrant Women Find Their Voice

Poet, artist and jewelry-maker Edith Graciela Sanabria is juggling a lot these days. She is writing a children's book and trying to sell not just her paintings, but also those of her mother, Chela, a recent Bolivian immigrant.

But on a warm day in May, as she hurried to take some new paintings to Panetier, a bakery and bistro in Del Ray, a flier tacked to the bulletin board caught her eye. The flier described an arts and healing workshop at a new gallery and small business and arts incubator for immigrant women in Old Town.

Sanabria -- a Bolivian immigrant who came to the United States in 1990 to escape an oppressive military culture -- felt sure the flier had been written for her.

"I said to my mother, 'Even if you don't understand, you have to come with me,' " recalled Sanabria, 44. "That's what I need, to heal myself and focus on the things I love. That's my dream."

The new gallery and business incubator, Empowered Women International Inc., is the brainchild of Marga Fripp, 33. Fripp, an engaging brunette, was a celebrity and well-known women's rights activist in her native Romania before immigrating to the United States in 2001.

Despite her education, experience and American husband, Fripp said she suffered the same feelings of alienation and self-doubt of many immigrant women when she arrived here.

"I felt like I was in the middle of the ocean," Fripp said. "No one to help me. No one to see me. I went from being a name to a no-name. I was a career professional and I was finding myself with nothing."

Nearly three years later, she finds herself with a gallery space on Prince Street in Old Town -- an enviable address she secured with little money -- a board of directors that includes a well-known Republican consultant and a seemingly limitless future, provided she can scrape together the $83,000 she needs for this year's operating budget.

Those who have been bowled over by Fripp since her arrival here have little doubt she'll succeed.

"She is a fireball," said Ann Stone, chairman of Republicans for Choice and one of Fripp's earliest backers. "I love to hold her up as an example to my American friends who whine and complain. She's in our country one year and [Maryland Gov. Robert L.] Ehrlich is giving her an award as one of the top volunteers in Maryland. . . . Marga is very American in a way. If there's a problem, she'll figure out how to fix it."

Fripp never had any plans to leave Romania, even after she met her husband -- a North Carolina native and Peace Corps volunteer named Jesse Fripp. She settled with him in the town of Timisoara in western Romania to raise a family. She was a successful TV journalist with her own program, "More Than Eve," and head of one of the largest women's organizations against domestic abuse in the country.

In August 2001, she gave birth to her second child, Arthur, now 2, but he suffered a debilitating stroke just two days later. The family was airlifted to Switzerland for his treatment. They later flew to the United States so Arthur could be treated at Children's Hospital in the District.

Arthur has since recovered -- Fripp said his pediatrician calls him a miracle baby -- but by then the Fripps had settled in Silver Spring, where Jesse Fripp's international development company is headquartered. With her child on his way to recovery, Marga Fripp entered a difficult period of her own.

Her English was not as good as it is now, and she was never able to find a position in her field of women's rights, she said. Even waiting in line for a Social Security card seemed a bureaucratic nightmare.