Boyle Heights' Rose River Memorial Project Honors Victims of COVID-19 Pandemic

The artist behind the project hopes to inspire a permanent memorial in Washington D.C.

More than 320,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and that number is rising by more than a thousand each day.

Some local artists have come up with a unique way to honor those who've lost their lives with a memorial wall of roses.

The red rose, an eternal symbol of love, is being used to memorialize those who lost their lives to COVID-19.

It's called the Rose River Memorial Project, started in Boyle Heights by a group of local artists led by Marcos Lutyens.

After losing several friends to the pandemic, he turned his grief into something beautiful and created an art installation made of hand-crafted felt roses hung on a massive fishing net. Each flower represents one life lost, more than 200 in Boyle Heights.