A late artist, UFO enthusiast and Connecticut small town character is being recognized 15 years after his death with a newly opened art show in Danbury.
“Dante Vaghi: UFO Pioneer” features the works and papers of a man who made a big impression on his hometown of Bethel, Connecticut.
Richard Klein, the curator of the show, said Vaghi was a “very public figure.”
“You’d see him walking around town in his UFO jumpsuit. If he knew in any way that you had any interest in UFOs or extraterrestrial life, he would start this stream of consciousness rap about his belief,” Klein said.
Vaghi’s belief began in 1950, when he claimed to see a large UFO above his Bethel shop, Vaghi Woodworking. That sighting was the spark that inspired decades of Vaghi’s model UFO recreations, drawings, T-shirts, and large, hand-painted signs that adorned his shop walls.
“Big signs basically welcoming extraterrestrials to Bethel, wishing them happy holidays, making people aware of UFOs,” Klein said. “The Vaghi Woodworking building was right adjacent to the old Bethel railroad station for Metro-North, the Danbury branch. So literally everyone taking the Danbury branch of Metro-North would see these giant signs on the building.”
Those signs, which have sat in storage for years, are among the works on display at the show. One reads: “WELCOME ALL PEOPLE FROM OTHER PLANETS TO BETHEL, CT, USA.”
“It’s interesting – I’m not particularly interested in UFOs,” Klein said. “But I am interested in artists who are visionary and I’m very interested in outsider art and folk art, and he’s a great example of this. And, also, he was such a positive and magnetic personality. Anyone who met him would remember him.”
After his initial sighting in 1950, Vaghi claimed to have seen 11 more UFOs, the last in 1996. In 1993, he also claimed to have been visited at his home by an extraterrestrial being who appeared while he was watching PBS.
Vaghi’s daughter, Maureen Norris, said being surrounded by her father’s works in an art gallery was surreal.
“Part of you wants to just cry, and the other part wants to jump up and down, and somewhere in between you’re going, ‘I can’t believe this,’” Norris said.
“If he could only be here right now with us, he’d be – he would always do jumping jacks and stuff. He was very animated,” she said. “It’s just almost unreal but it’s also very peaceful to go, ‘This is finally happening, he finally kind of gets his day.’”
Norris inherited her father’s belief in life beyond Earth.
“Until they can prove me different – and they can’t,” Norris said. “I believe.”
Musician Billy Michael remembers his friend Dante as larger than life, even 15 years after Vaghi’s death in 2011 at age 89.
“I mean, we don’t stop talking about him,” Michael said. “He’s iconic, fundamental to Bethel.”
Michael remembers Vaghi’s favorite song: Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.”
“When Dante was alive, I would say to him, ‘Dante, when you die, I’m playing Spirit in the Sky 13 times at the town hall at your funeral,’” Michael said. “And Dante – this was his quote: ‘I can’t wait!’”
At the opening reception for the art show, Michael revisited the tune with his acoustic guitar for the dozens of attendees.
Vaghi loved the song so much that Michael played it 13 times during Vaghi’s funeral procession.
Over the closing chords, he yelled: “Dante lives!”
“Dante Vaghi: UFO Pioneer” runs through Dec. 6 at the Gallery at the Visual and Performing Arts Center at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury.
