Michael Gittes's artwork has been featured in museums and art galleries around the world, but the Los Angeles artist is perhaps most proud of his latest project, "Strangers to No One," on display in the apartments and office cubicles of almost 2,000 hospital workers in Brooklyn, N.Y. Earlier this month, Gittes, 32, filled a truck with 1,800 paintings he had completed since the start of the pandemic and had them shipped 2,777 miles to Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which was hit hard by Covid-19 last spring. "I wanted every single employee -- all 1,800 -- to have a painting to show how much they are loved and appreciated," said Gittes, who spent over three months painting 100 flowers a day, using a syringe as "a symbol of healing." "I decided to paint flowers because, even though these people are all part of a big beautiful garden, I wanted them to know they were all individual flowers and, without them, there would be no garden," he said.

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