Windsor Colorado’s ‘Follow Your Heart’ Sculpture Melts the Heart

Hundreds of thousands of people have driven by a sculpture in Downtown Windsor; have they really looked at it, though?

The Windsor-Severance Fire Station, on 7^th Street in Windsor, has this statue out front. It always catches my eye as I drive passed, because it’s so life-like.

Every time I drive by, I think ‘That is such a sad scene…’; because to me, it looks as if the firefighter is kneeling down to give the kid some bad news.

The bronze sculpture is titled, ‘Follow Your Heart’. Which, I guess is the intended sentiment of the piece: The firefighter is telling the young boy to follow his heart if he wants to be a firefighter when he grows up.

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If you are right on the sculpture you can see the kid does have a little smile on his face as he takes in the advice from the firefighter. From the street, however, it really appears the firefighter might be giving the child some bad news.

Austin Weishel, from the Loveland area, created "Follow Your Heart" at the age of 19, after taking up sculpting at the age of 14. His works are mostly of firefighters as he spent more than 11 years as a firefighter.

His sculpture "Ashes to Answers," dedicated to arson dogs, is in Washington D.C. and won "Most Popular" in a contest run by the Washington Post.