Kelly Wearstler Launches Side Hustle: A Bold Fusion of Art, Design, and Cultural Experimentation

This fall, Kelly Wearstler, the Los Angeles–based designer known for her fearless approach to form, color, and collaboration, unveils Side Hustle—a new curatorial platform that expands her vision beyond interiors into the wider world of art, design, performance, and technology. Launching with its first exhibition, “Again, Differently,” opening October 16 in Beverly Hills and online at SideHustleGallery.com, the initiative presents a living dialogue between mediums, makers, and audiences.

A New Kind of Creative Laboratory

Described by Wearstler as “a space for ideas to unfold beyond the logic of client or commission,” Side Hustle is at once a physical and digital experiment. It offers artists and designers from around the world—from Brazil’s Sonia Gomes to the Netherlands’ Nynke Koster and Portugal’s Leonor Antunes—an opportunity to explore new forms that merge craft, materiality, and performance. The inaugural exhibition’s theme, repetition, becomes a metaphor for artistic persistence: each gesture a loop, a ritual, a return that remakes meaning.

“My studio practice has long integrated work from across such a wide range of creative disciplines,” says Wearstler. “It is this exploration that led to the birth of Side Hustle—a space for ideas to unfold beyond the logic of client or commission, working to present works that contribute to the ongoing evolution of design as a cultural practice.”

“My studio practice has long integrated work from across such a wide range of creative disciplines,”

Kelly Wearstler

Set within a historic Beverly Hills pool house once used by the Broccoli family to screen James Bond films, “Again, Differently” transforms the setting into a space of introspection and transformation. Visitors encounter works in timber, neon, rubber mold, textile, and bronze—each a meditation on rhythm, memory, and reinvention. The accompanying digital platform extends this spirit of discovery worldwide, inviting audiences to follow the artists’ processes and explore editorial features, sound, and scent designed specifically for the show.

Collaboration as Culture

At its core, Side Hustle redefines the creative process as collective dialogue. The project’s contributors—ranging from gallerist Jeffrey Deitch to Grammy-nominated producer Kenny Beats and luxury fragrance house Perfumehead—underscore Wearstler’s commitment to expanding how art is experienced. The result is an immersive, multi-sensory world where music, architecture, and scent converge as parallel acts of making.

Deitch, who contributes an essay to the launch, describes the project as a timely cultural shift: “We are now in a new convergence period with a dynamic interchange between art and design…Kelly Wearstler has been an innovator in fusing architecture, design, and fine art. Side Hustle is a visionary initiative to combine art, design, craft, technology, and performance.”

“Side Hustle is a visionary initiative to combine art, design, craft, technology, and performance,”

Jeffrey Deitch

Through Side Hustle, Wearstler continues to challenge hierarchies between creative disciplines. The project draws from her decades-long collaborations with artisans, architects, and global brands—from Dior and Louis Vuitton to Christofle and Farrow & Ball—and channels that network into a platform that privileges the artist’s process over the product. Each edition will debut both physically and digitally, with future iterations planned in new cities and unexpected venues.

“Side Hustle isn’t just an exhibition,” notes Zelika Garcia of Zona Maco. “It’s a living movement that is shifting how we think about creativity today.”

As much a philosophy as a platform, Side Hustle celebrates the act of making as its own form of storytelling—where the repetition of gestures becomes language, and collaboration becomes culture. Through “Again, Differently,” Wearstler invites audiences to rediscover creativity not as perfection, but as persistence—a rhythm that builds possibility with every return.

“It’s a living movement that is shifting how we think about creativity today,”

Zelika Garcia