Nick DeFord is an artist, educator, and arts administrator residing in Knoxville, Tenneesse. DeFord is the former Chief Programs Officer at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and has served on the board of Craft in America, National Basketry Organization, and Tennessee Craft. He has exhibited at the Bascom Center for Visual Arts, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Knoxville Museum of Art, and the Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. He has taught past workshops at the University of Louisville, East Carolina University, Arrowmont, and Penland School of Craft. In the fall of 2018, DeFord was a resident at the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida, and also was an artist-in-resident at Truro Center for the Arts and Elf School of the Arts. He has been a reviewer for the Ohio Arts Council, Center for Craft, and the juror for the American Tapestry Biennial 13. His work explores the visual culture of cartography, occult imagery, geographical souvenirs, family photographs, and other structures of information that are altered to examine the relationship of identity, space, and place. The disruption of these visual systems reveals a thin boundary between the known and unknown, the weird, and the uncanny.