Fresh Start With Art

"I got this feeling -- this is how immigrants are treated," Fripp recalled. "In crowds, we look like second-class citizens, kids hanging off us." The Social Security office in Montgomery County "was like Ellis Island 100 years ago. I felt so bad."

She ultimately landed a one-year position with the national service organization AmeriCorps, heading up marketing for a neighborhood initiative in Prince George's County, and later was honored by Ehrlich with the volunteer award.

In her spare time, she began making the contacts necessary to start Empowered Women International. She firmly believed that immigrant women -- unlike their husbands and children, who assimilate through school and work -- have the most difficult time adjusting to their new lives.

"The fact that I couldn't get a job and spent such a long time searching really hurt my self-confidence," Fripp said. "To go from someone who was well known in my field to someone who can't actually be paid for anything was like a slap in your face. I didn't see myself working at McDonald's. I thought I could do better than that."

Through her work at AmeriCorps, she met an Alexandria landscape architect named Mark X. LaPierre. LaPierre, 53, had a five-year lease on a office space at 1212 Prince St. in Old Town but no one to fill it. He had lost three large clients after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and had to lay off six people.

"I was basically a lonely guy in a dark, shut-down office space with dust growing on the tables," LaPierre said. "I was pretty discouraged, having lost a lot of work. Then I met Marga. She reinvigorated me."

LaPierre and Fripp agreed that she would use his office as her new office and exhibit space for A Woman's Story Gallery. Pierre also donated paint, labor, computer help and furniture to the new venture. His business has since rebounded, and his new employees have squeezed in upstairs.

"We're sort of cheek-by-jowl upstairs," LaPierre said. "But we've made a commitment. It's like the bird in the nest. You incubate it and it hatches and grows."

The gallery opened in November. Most recently, Fripp showed brightly colored abstract paintings filled with birds by an Indian immigrant named Pallavi, a local resident and library staffer whom she met at the Alexandria Library while signing up for a library card.

The gallery also shows Sanabria's paintings and jewelry and the paintings of her mother, Chela. Their story is one of Fripp's inspirations.

Chela Sanabria was suffering from debilitating arthritis and gastrointestinal trouble and could barely walk when she immigrated to the United States last year.

"I was sure I was going to die," she said in Spanish, sitting down in the modest brick home she shares with her daughter in south Alexandria, crammed with canvases and art supplies.

But with the help of American doctors, alternative healing massage, healthy food and exercise, she began a rapid improvement. Her stomach has healed, and she now walks without assistance.

Sanabria credits a large part of her recovery to art. She had taken up painting in Bolivia before she fell ill and has now returned to it.

Every day, she wakes up with visions of what to paint next: rain forests; flower-filled patios and street scenes from her home town of Chochibama, Bolivia; campesinos, or peasants, from the indigenous tribes of her home country; and the Andes mountains.

"I am so inspired!" she said, clapping her hands together in delight.

In addition to the Sanabrias, Fripp and her squad of 100 volunteers now have 150 immigrant clients trying to launch a variety of small businesses, from freelance writing to computer training. Fripp is encouraging one client, a Sudanese immigrant who specializes in the tattoo art of mehndi, to create a line of greeting cards around her designs for the gallery. Fripp and Edith Sanabria are working on a plan where she can use her artistic talents to start an after-school art program for children in her home.

When Brooke Leto, 37, an Arlington resident and Ethiopian immigrant, attended a poetry reading at the gallery recently, she found herself talking about feelings of alienation and uncertainty she hadn't discussed since she arrived in this country more than two decades ago. She said she was immediately understood.

"I found myself opening up about issues I haven't for years," Leto said. "It was an immediate 'uh-huh' reaction. It's very comforting, and in that sense what Marga is trying to do is very needed."

Aside from the $83,000 Fripp needs to continue operating, she also has dreams of securing bigger grants and donations to expand the programming to workshops, art lessons and lectures in neighborhoods such as Arlandria or the West End, which have large immigrant communities. She pooh-poohs those who discourage her and continues to dream large.

"When I came here and immediately had this idea to help immigrants fight for their rights, some friends said to me, 'Marga, in this country, you need to crawl before you can walk,' " Fripp said. "In my family -- literally -- I didn't crawl, and my kids didn't crawl. We all stood up and walked!"