Mar 17 2022 32 mins
Darcy Trunzo is a multi-media artist born in Homer City, Pennsylvania whose many careers and pursuits have fueled and informed her unrelenting creative and investigative pursuits. A true coal miner’s daughter - she learned early on that industrial and economic collapse would lead to constant personal reinvention - as her father also reeducated to become a medical paraprofessional after his mine was in the 1990’s.
Informed by relatives and mentors who ‘hauled’ her to art and cultural events and artistic endeavors at an early age - everything from conceptual art shows to and the homes of craftspeople record stores and and gay clubs -Darcy’s passage from youth into adulthood would always be informed by both her working class roots and her newfound obsession with cultural variation and where the social and emotional aspects of such things collide.
Attending the opening of the Andy Warhol museum in 1994 with her cousin Howard a lifelong impact on her worldview as the im -to artist binary that Warhol lived and experienced seemed hauntingly, close to that of her own. That night - citizens of s Northside neighborhood comingled seamlessly with Rock and Roll legends, art ‘Superstars’ and publishers in equal measure. At 18 years of age - this flattening of social hierarchies would be a perception shift that would remain with her forever. There were no sacred cows- or more pointedly - cows (and people) were sacred or not in equal measure.
Darcy spent her first post high-school decade in Pittsburgh - attending classes at Chatham College and Pittsburgh Filmmakers, piecemeal with coursework in art, film theory, media studies, while all the time working in kitchens and on painting crews–and equally important in nightclubs before forgoing school altogether in order to work and pay down debt from her coursework.
It with was her enrollment in AmeriCorps in 1998 that Darcy began her work in civic life and the arts in earnest. She began teaching media literacy to youth at Northside Urban Pathways charter school - and also serving out of PCTV Channel 21 where she learned television production and taught community members to do the same. It was here where she put her interests in artists such as Adrian Piper, Laurie Anderson and Bruce Nauman to work engaging youth and adults in new ways of using media tools to consider space and identity.
It was also at PCTV where former Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto (then councilman) -tapped her to become one of his first research fellows. While transitioning out of AmeriCorps Darcy spent the next year researching arts based economic development and public art - a role that would eventually see her as founder of the Sprout Mural Arts program. In that time she also was promoted to a position at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust where her primary job was audience engagement and development - for the large multi-programmatic institution
With that foundation in mind for the last decade Trunzo -has been throughout the United States as a location manager and producer for film, televisionand museum focused fine artists ---while maintaining a daily art practice herself. She engages voraciously with contemporary culture and music, working in New York clubs and venues and becoming a Dj herself spinning classic vinyl under the name “Allsortz’
With her base in both New York City - and also Pittsburgh,and Indiana, County - Darcy has found herself repeatedly engaging in the multivariate identities of a changing Appalachia - her own roots and how the community where she was raised also reconciles itself with the greater world.
Over the last two years Trunzo has returned to Indiana, full time after the collapsing of the film and other industries under Covid-19 to be near family - and document the pandemic in as many forms as possible. This has been an ongoing practice and has found her working in classical forms like drawing,painting, and photography as well as more experimental and conceptual forms such as social practice, dance and theater.