2026 ARTISTS
Session I
Eboni Fondren
Born and raised in Chicago, Eboni Fondren has emerged as one of the most sought-after Jazz vocalists in the mid-west region. A captivating performer, international touring artist, and cultural ambassador now based in Kansas City, MO, Fondren possesses a voice frequently compared to Ella Fitzgerald and Nancy Wilson. A multifaceted singer, songwriter, bandleader, actress, and vocal coach, Fondren is passionate about preserving the unique legacy of the women who shaped the rich history of jazz in Kansas City and beyond. While performing in Paris last summer, Fondren learned about Seaside and the Escape To Create Arts Residency. As our January jazz musician-in-residence, she will further develop a multi-media show of storytelling and song honoring the women whose artistry continues to inspire generations of jazz practitioners and performers: Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Etta James, Nancy Wilson and Julia Lee.
Fondren will contribute a performance at Coastal Branch Library, 10:00AM - 11:00AM on Wednesday, January 7th. Accompanied by pianist Cam Ray of Top Hat Live Productions, she will present their life stories and perform iconic songs of the great jazz artists who shaped her personal journey as a contemporary jazz artist.
Emily Harrold
Director, producer, documentary filmmaker Emily Harrold’s work has aired nationally and internationally on platforms including PBS, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, CNN, Discovery, National Geographic, and MSNBC. Her films have garnered numerous professional and audience awards and have preferred at leading festivals including Tribeca, Telluride, DOC NYC, Nantucket, and Sundance. Harrold has produced numerous films for the PBS American Experience series including the stirring “Voice of Freedom” about opera singer Marian Anderson and the “Flood in the Desert” about the 1928 S. Francis Dam disaster in Los Angeles. Based in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Harrold is a regional Emmy Awardee and a finalist for the prestigious Columbia Dupont Awards which is considered one of the most prestigious awards in journalism. Harrold will devote her E2C residency to final deign of Sister Senators, a feature documentary film due to premier in the spring of 2026. The film follows the only five women serving in the South Carolina State Senate and explores how the three Republicans, one Democrat and one independent work separately and together across the aisle.
Harrold will screen segments of Sister Senators at 10AM on Wednesday, January 28th at Coastal Branch Library in a program also featuring filmmaker Christine Murray.
Christine Murray
Christine Murray is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, creative director, and podcast producer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A professional storyteller working mainly in the arts and culture space, Murray is passionate about creating meaningful, resonant cultural experiences that weave together people, place, storytelling, and state-of-the-art technology. She has crafted educational media for museums and cultural institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, SFMOMA, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Murray’s residency is dedicated to developing pre-production materials for an experimental documentary about Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, one of the most important forgotten women of the 20th century. Titled The Baroness: Impossibly Free the film will be structured as a conversation between Murray herself and the Baroness, a pioneering poet and performance artist who was a central figure in New York’s avant-garde scene during the 1910s and 1920s. Weaving together historical research with personal reflection, abstract imagery, and poetry, the film explores whose stories get told as the history of art in America.
Murray will give a TEDx style multi-media presentation of the artful and often humorous challenges of documentary filmmaking at the Coastal Branch Library at 10AM on Wednesday, January 28th in a program also featuring documentarian Emily Harrold.
Dr. Laurence Sherr
Dr. Laurence Sherr is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music at Kennesaw State University where he mentored young composers for over three decades. An internationally recognized Holocaust music lecturer, composer, and educator, Sherr’s compositions have been performed on five continents with albums released in Europe and the U.S. Composed during his 1994 Escape to Create residency, Journeys Within: Concerto for Flute and Chamber Ensemble, won the Chamber Music Award and Grand Prize of the 1995 Delius Composition Contest. His album Fugitive Footsteps: Remembrance Music was awarded a 2023 Global Music Awards Gold Medal. Sherr’s career awards include numerous prizes and grants including recognition by the American Composers Forum and Meet the Composer. He is recipient of numerous fellowships including the MacDowell Colony, the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, and was selected as the U.S. Department of the Interior Artist-in-Residence, Hot Springs National Park. Like many composers of Western classical music, Sherr frequently refers to nature in his compositions. He returns to Escape To Create to compose a new double concerto for clarinet, cello and orchestra.
Sherr’s Blue Ridge Frescos, written for solo classical guitar, will be performed at Anne Hunter Galleries, 25 Central Square, on January 25th, 4pm-6pm during the annual E2C artist reception.
Harold D. Smith
Self-taught Kansas City artist Harold D. Smith’s bold expressionistic paintings are internationally exhibited and collected. His dynamic portraits, built in jagged planes with bold slashing strokes of brilliant colors, challenge common stereotypes as they explore the multilayered complexities of the urban, blue-collar Black American experience. The intense use of color and vibrant energy emanating from his canvasses are also steeped in his love for jazz and jazz artists. Smith’s works are widely exhibited and are collected in the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. A Studio, Inc. residency artist, Smith is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and Art Omni (New York). He is a recipient of a coveted Pollock Krasner Foundation Award and Kansas City’s distinguished Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award. In addition to his active art practice across painting, collage, assemblage, mixed media, performance, and video, Smith is a regular writer for the art and culture magazine KC Studio. Recently retired from a thirty-six-year teaching career, he remains a passionate advocate for arts education in public schools. He is deeply involved in his local community with focus on promoting artists with disabilities and young, self-taught artists of color. While in Seaside, Smith will create a book of art and companion stories entitled “The Many Saints of 13th Street”, a memoir preserving the historical significance of the vibrant 1970’s blue-collar black community located in the urban core of Kansas City.
Smith will exhibit and give an artist talk during our annual reception at Anne Hunter Galleries, 25 Central Square, 4pm-6pm on Sunday, January 25th.