SYCAMORE ALUMNI ASHLEY GANGE TAKES ON CHALLENGES, HELPS BUILD WOMEN’S CENTER IN RWANDA Diversity and design. Resourcefulness
Ashley’s years at Sycamore School, and how
leading to opportunities. For Ashley
experiences at school created opportunities
Gange (’99), these words and beliefs keep
to challenge and grow her own ideas.
then headed to New York to continue school at Columbia University. Even as she was going through her college and graduate studies, she was still using lessons learned in art at Sycamore as an anchor to the new things that she was experiencing. “Eileen Prince was a huge influence,” Gange says of the Sycamore’s founding art teacher, who is still teaching and just completed her 33rd year at Sycamore in 2018. “What I still really value about her as a person, an artist,
bubbling to the surface, as she continues to find new paths to take.
While in California, Gange finished college,
“Sycamore was very much about
A graduate of both California College of
community. It wasn’t
the Arts and Columbia University, Gange
a community based
has worked across multiple fields within
on anything other than
architecture, interior design, animation,
academic excellence
public art, and sculpture. The diversity
and acceptance of
of these experiences informs her approach
people that were from
to design, which is her passion.
all walks of life,” she says. “I think that was
One of her recent architectural works was
nowhere else in Indiana
being involved in the design and construction
- a really special thing.”
and a teacher is that she believes in rigor in the arts,” Gange says. “She’s not someone who will tell you all art is good whether you actually put effort into it or not. She believes in true craftsmanship and rigorous understanding of concepts. I think that those things and art history are things
of Women’s Opportunity Centers in Rwanda and Kosovo, a 4-tier educational campus in
After Sycamore, Ashley went to Michigan
rural Rwanda (pledged as a Commitment
to Interlochen Arts Academy, a boarding
to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative),
high school for the arts. It was soon after she
and project management for commercial
graduated from high school, still keeping
and retail spaces - from design through
the lessons of Sycamore close, that she knew
construction with Sharon Davis Design,
instinctively that she needed to keep moving
an award-winning socially-minded design
and continue finding new artistic challenges.
firm in New York City.
“I was really only applying to art schools that was the trajectory,” she says.” I had
As noted in her online bio, Ashley is devoted to
already majored in visual arts for three and
what she calls resource preservation and careful
a half years at Interlochen, so at that point I
consumerism, and is committed to community
decided to go to California College of the Arts,
development through design. From where
a very old school out in California in the Bay
did the ideas spring? We can go back to
Area. I was really excited to get to a coast.”
that you don’t find at a lot of public schools, especially now having my daughter starting in public schools in New York. I can see that’s a very special skill set that Mrs. Prince brings to Sycamore.” While focused on the aspect of art, sculpture, that most interested her at Sycamore, Gange now sees the path that led from those early passions to where she is today. “Sculpture was the thing that I decided I was infatuated with and really the only thing I wanted to pursue when I was at Sycamore. I went to college for sculpture, and by the time
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