If you’ve driven past the McDonald’s on Tacoma Avenue near the County-City Building, you’ve likely seen a large glass vase of flowers dominating the restaurant’s facade for the last 25 years.
Commenters on Reddit have speculated for years that the sculpture was done by Dale Chihuly, a world-renowned glass artist who got his start in Tacoma and is credited for shaping the glass-art scene in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. You can see his work inside the Tacoma Art Museum and the Museum of Glass, as well as on the Chihuly Bridge of Glass downtown, a 500-foot outdoor pedestrian bridge that crosses Interstate 705.
After a lot of detective work, The News Tribune recently confirmed that the sculpture inside the McDonald’s at 802 Tacoma Ave. is not a Chihuly. It was commissioned by artist Dennis Mullen for the McDonald’s location in 2000, two years before the Museum of Glass opened a mile and a half away…