By Austin Fleskes
Loveland Reporter-Herald, Colo.
LOVELAND, Colo. — When he was just in high school, the Loveland Fire Rescue Authority gave artist Austin Weishel the opportunity to start his career in firefighting. Now, years later, he will be paying it back by honoring the history of the department with a sculpture that will be placed at one station, while another artist creates a piece for a second station.
“They gave me my start, and I am capturing their start at the fire department,” Weishel said.
Two LFRA stations are now set to have sculptures placed within or just outside of them, honoring the history of the department and the important work done by firefighters in the community.
The two sculptures, once finished, will each be going to one of LFRA’s 10 stations, with Weishel’s piece at Station 10 in Johnstown and fellow artist James Lynxwiler’s piece at Station 7 in the Big Thompson Canyon.
How the artists and sculptures were chosen
The Loveland Visual Arts Commission sought out artists for the two pieces earlier this year, working with members of the LFRA to find both the right artists and the right vision for the two sculptures.
Susan Ison, Loveland’s cultural arts director, said when the two stations were constructed, it generated funding for public art, which the team was able to use to commission the work. In 1985, Loveland passed the Art in Public Places ordinance, which designates 1% of the city’s capital projects — valued at $50,000 or more — for the purchase, display and ongoing maintenance of art, according to the Art in Public Places website.
Greg Ward, assistant chief of Risk, Reduction and Readiness at the LFRA, said that in working with the Visual Arts Commission, the team landed on Weishel and Lynxwiler as the two artists to create the pieces for Stations 7 and 10.
“There was something about these two gentlemen,” he said. “They just understand the history and they understand what the firefighters have been through, and I think they could see it from the firefighters’ point of view and the community’s point of view to create something that will stand out.”
The artists and their pieces
Weishel is originally from Loveland and has been interested in both art and the firefighting service since he was a kid. He said he got into sculpting as a natural progression from his interest in art when he visited his grandparents in Arizona and got the chance to visit a bronze foundry. The person running that foundry told him to come back the next year with a clay model that he could turn into a statue, which he ultimately did, creating a statue of a firefighter.
While attending Thompson Valley High School, he was part of the LFRA’s student firefighter program. The program was shut down while he was in it, but he went on to join the Windsor Severance Fire Rescue team where he worked for a little over 10 years before leaving a few years ago; he created a statue at the request of the fire marshal that still stands at Windsor’s Station 1.
“It was cool. I got the job with the sculpting, and then I got into the volunteering with them as a firefighter,” he said.
He said getting to be part of the LFRA project — something that made him incredibly nervous as he applied — meant a lot to him. His piece, when finished, will stand in the lobby of the Johnstown station and will depict a life-sized firefighter blowing a bugle and holding an ax; the statue will stand right near a historic hose cart that sits in the entranceway. Ward said the idea was to have the statue calling to the Bartholf Hose Company, Loveland’s first fire department, which is captured in a picture up on the wall.
“Really we are trying to almost have a firefighter standing next to that hose cart that is calling to those firefighters up in that mural,” Ward said.
“It is a big win for me,” Weishel said of being chosen for the project.
Lynxwiler was in the fire service for decades, starting his career with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office emergency services team doing wildland fire response and mountain rescue before serving with the Poudre Fire Authority for 22 years, which he only just recently left. He, too, said he has been doing art all his life and continued it while he fought fires.
He said he was eager to be part of the project when the search for artists began.
“I think my background gave me a lead (on) their culture and what they would be wanting,” he said.
Lynxwiler’s piece will be made of metal silhouettes on sandstone, depicting three firefighters in varying gear to portray the different kinds of jobs required of firefighters in mountainous areas like Station 7 , including wildland firefighting and swift water rescue. His piece will also incorporate the original station’s siren that was washed away in the 2013 Big Thompson Flood and eventually recovered.
Ward said the hope for this piece was to depict and memorialize the work of firefighters in the rural areas of west Loveland who have had to deal with major natural disasters.
The impact
While the pieces are not expected to be completed and placed until next year, Ison said having works like this is important for Loveland to continue featuring unique art pieces that people can enjoy throughout the city as they go about their days.
“People notice them and they just become part of our everyday lives,” she said.
Weishel and Lynxwiler both said they were honored to be part of the project and that it meant a great deal to them to give back to the LFRA.
“It is more of a gift from my heart,” Weishel said. “It is for the men and women that serve, that have served … and will in the future. This gave me the start of my whole career and it is a huge honor to actually be able to work with them again.”
“Throughout my career in the fire service I worked side by side with the people from Loveland,” Lynxwiler said. “So in a lot of ways the department down there has always been … a really important part of my fire history. It is really quite an honor. I really feel lucky that I get a chance to do this and I hope that, in the end, it turns out as good as I envision and everyone will be as excited about it as me.”
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