Ivy Wolk is Publicly Indecent
She's completely everywhere. What should feel like a daring flirtation with overexposure just leaves us wanting more.
Ivy Wolk is completely everywhere. What should feel like a daring flirtation with overexposure just leaves us wanting more.
An actress, comedian, and internet native who built a following at 13 and has been clipped, reposted, and obsessively catalogued ever since, Ivy has the kind of impossibly quick wit I can’t help but be jealous of. Now 21, she is captivating to talk to and even more captivating to be a fan of.
She has also been, by a mile, the most requested feature for One Hour Photo. So when we finally locked in a date, I wanted to do a shoot with Ivy that had a little bite to it: tabloid-era mug shots, very 2007 DUI-core.
“A mug shot can easily be iconic,” she told me between photos.
Mug shots are public record, and Ivy has been living, in some form, on the record since she was 13. Here she is.
What’s something people don’t know about you?
People know pretty much absolutely everything about me — every medication I take, every diagnosis I have, everything I’ve ever experienced. At least in the past 10 years that I’ve been on the internet, I think it’s been chronicled. There’s not much to not know about me. I leave it all out on the field.
When did you get on the internet?
I mean, I’ve always been on the internet. I got a following online when I was 13.
What’s your relationship with mug shots?
It’s a great piece of celebrity iconography. I think a mug shot can easily be iconic. I follow local mug shot Instagram accounts — Raleigh mug shots, Tulsa mug shots. It’s fun to see what rowdy local people in places I’ve never been to are getting up to.
What’s your relationship to Lindsay Lohan?
Love her. I find her to be one of our most fascinating texts. I think Lindsay is endlessly fascinating, and I love her work.
If you got arrested, what would it be for?
I would like to say it would be for protesting, but I don’t be going outside like that.
It would probably be for public indecency. In college, I was really experimenting with taking my tits out as a punchline, and it was always funny. The right people found it funny, the wrong people would find it arrestable.
What pisses you off?
People who are sanctimonious. People who are aggressively morally righteous, or think absolutely everything has to be a virtuosic pursuit, or that everything has to represent your politics and your morals all the time. I think it flattens the human experience. I think it flattens art.
Things can be fun and transgressive and risky, and it doesn’t have to be indicative of how somebody actually feels about the world. Of course art is inherently political, but I think we can play with different shades and levels of that.
Is stand-up forever?
Stand-up is completely and totally forever. I don’t see myself ever abandoning it. I have no interest in abandoning it, the same way I don’t think I’ll ever abandon the internet. It’s just another medium through which I can express myself and disseminate my ideas. It’s very important to me, and it’s totally fulfilling.
What does stand-up give you that acting doesn’t?
Acting has so many gatekeepers in it. There are so many people you’re waiting for permission from all the time. But stand-up, you can just do it on sheer will and motivation. It’s endless freedom for artistic expression. Same with the internet.
What was your first stand-up show like?
I was wearing a bright green trench coat. It was electric and incredible. I was kind of manic and wily, and I was crushing. It was the craziest feeling.
My whole squad of guy friends who got me into doing open mics were there filming me and losing their minds in the back. Then we all loaded into my friend Gio’s van after the show and drove around the city. I felt like I was on the precipice of the rest of my life. I felt so young and awesome and unburdened. It was wonderful.
When was that?
I started doing stand-up in August 2023.
What was growing up in LA like?
Psychically torturous.
Who are the divas you are attracted to?
Lindsay, Britney, Courtney, Amy, Anna Nicole. There’s a long list.
What kind of diva do you gravitate toward?
Spiritually, the divas I care about are people who were once divas and then crashed out, or people people thought were going to be the diva and then never made it to be the diva. Whether they died, went so crazy, or just flopped. A full flop diva is important to me. Like Valerie Cherish from The Comeback. That’s the kind of woman I really gravitate toward.
What’s your love language?
Riffing. Just going back and forth, hard, funny jokes.
So your ideal partner has to be funny?
Yeah, and really quick.
What gives you the ick the fastest?
Not having anything to say. Not making things that communicate how you feel about the world. Bad art, or just no drive or zeal to make anything of substance. I guess that would be it.
One Hour Photo Creative Production: Carly Kane
Photo & wigs: Dev Bowman
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One more recreation…