Then there were the showpieces: steel-and-glass representations of an owner\u2019s love for the open road and classic automotive design. It was these vehicles that captured the imagination of Ben Tuna, a self-described car guy and stained glass artist, who saw a way to create something beautiful from the rubble.<\/p>\n
![\"Pieces](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769478433_354_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Pieces of salvaged glass and other tools litter the work table of artist Ben Tuna as he works to create sculptures using vintage Porches that were burned in the L.A. fires.<\/p>\n
(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Beginning in March 2025, Tuna snagged five burned-out Porsches from the L.A. fires, and began turning the shells into cathedral-like creations using salvaged stained glass from old churches.<\/p>\n
Armed with a soldering iron and good intentions, Tuna paid tribute to what the fires took.<\/p>\n
Tuna said that he was moved by posts on Instagram of cars getting taken away on trailers, and by reading about the loss in news stories. He couldn\u2019t stop thinking about what the collectors were experiencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was all so sad to imagine losing something that you might have worked 30, 40, 50 years to collect,\u201d Tuna said. \u201cAnd it kind of broke my heart. A lot of those cars were history. They\u2019re not making new ones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tuna made connections through social media to obtain the Porsche shells, with four coming from a single collector\u2019s garage in the Palisades. As a fan of classic automotive design, Tuna calls the Porsches \u201cicons of design\u201d and \u201cthe most recognizable cars in the world,\u201d despite what they looked like after the fires. He wishes he could have collected many more.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably could have gotten 300, but I just didn\u2019t have the space and couldn\u2019t act fast enough,\u201d he said, adding that he also acquired two additional Porches that were not burned in the city\u2019s fires.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769478433_767_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
One of five vintage Porches burned in the L.A. fires that Ben Tuna reimagined as works of art using salvaged stained glass.<\/p>\n
(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Tuna\u2019s first post-fire project was a 1965 Porsche 356 that he turned into a 700-pound piece of movable sculpture. The artwork took him and two helpers several months to complete at his workshop on the east side of L.A. They wore respirators while they worked to avoid dangerous ash and chemicals, and began by stripping the car down to bare metal.<\/p>\n
Next came the meticulous glass work. Tuna used pieces of glass from what he estimates are about 15 different salvaged stained glass windows from decommissioned churches. He thinks they were likely all created in different countries, eras and studios. Much of the illustrated glass in the car was hand-painted in Germany in the late 1800s, a look he grew to love as a kid after hearing how much his father \u2014 also a stained glass artist \u2014 adored it.<\/p>\n
Tuna says he\u2019s not trying to tell a story with the windows. Instead, he\u2019s assembling them by feel: matching pieces of cut glass by size and color on top of a dark table before using lead to solder them together in a perfect arch for the car\u2019s back window. Tuna says he never knows what a window is going to look like before the end, when he lights it up \u2014 but by merging the glass and the car he\u2019s aiming to honor the design legacies of both.<\/p>\n
![\"Stained](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769478434_713_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Stained glass windows salvaged from churches are key to artist Ben Tuna\u2019s practice. \u201cAll these windows were beautiful back in the day but have been forgotten,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these windows were beautiful back in the day but have been forgotten,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Though Tuna\u2019s cars are still works in progress, his goal is to eventually display all seven as part of a gallery show. In the meantime, he\u2019s hosting visitors who want to see the work so far \u2014 including the owner of the four cars salvaged from the Palisades, who cried.<\/p>\n
Tuna says everyone who has come to see the art has left feeling a bit more reverent.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769478434_920_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Artist Ben Tuna stands with a piece of art he made from a vintage Porsche that was burned in the L.A. fires. \u201cBecause these cars are so big, when you\u2019re standing around them, you really see what fire can do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
(Jason Armond \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause these cars are so big, when you\u2019re standing around them, you really see what fire can do,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can really study it, and you start to think about loss and how hot the fire must have burned and what shape the buildings around the cars must have been in afterwards.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each car is an altar of remembrance to the fires, Tuna said, but they\u2019re also a reminder. <\/p>\n
\u201dEven when you lose everything, there\u2019s still beauty that can come from that loss,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can take all that devastation and still make something good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After last year\u2019s fires, cars were often all that remained on the lots of homes reduced to rubble.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[18890,365,362,363,364,150047,1305,150051,366,18,117,61836,9423,19,17,150048,6863,7983,1375,28654,150049,150050,30335],"class_list":{"0":"post-305351","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-artist","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-ben-tuna","14":"tag-car","15":"tag-classic-automotive-design","16":"tag-design","17":"tag-eire","18":"tag-entertainment","19":"tag-garage","20":"tag-glass","21":"tag-ie","22":"tag-ireland","23":"tag-l-a-fire","24":"tag-last-year","25":"tag-owner","26":"tag-pacific-palisades","27":"tag-piece","28":"tag-porsches","29":"tag-unfathomable-loss","30":"tag-window"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115964545857265852","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}