Elvira M. Culotta

REVERE & LYNN ARTIST & TEACHER, 96.

Elvira M. Culotta, 96, passed away peacefully at the Arbors, Bedford, NH on December 5, 2010, her spirit soaring joyfully aloft to the bright morning star. She was born in Boston, MA on August 9, 1914.

After receiving a Bachelor of Science in Education from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1939, she designed wallpaper for the New York City market. During WWII, she worked as a draftsperson at GE in Lynn, MA.

For over 30 years, she taught art, including ceramics, in the Revere public schools, grades 1 -12. During summer vacations, she would travel to Sicily, where her parents, Joseph V. and Amelia Bandiera Culotta,were born and to Rome, Cuba, and Florida.

After her retirement in 1979, she participated in many art exhibits at the Marblehead Arts Association, the Swampscott Arts Association, and in the Boston area. She won many prizes for her bright-colorful collage style, which included rice paper, embedded in acrylic paintings. Her creative enthusiasm for art and beauty sustained her.

In 1990 she sold her family home on Florence Avenue in Revere and moved into a condo on Lynn Shore Drive, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and Nahant. She is survived by her cousins, Paul Carr, Jean and Louis Villanova. Phaneuf Funeral Home, Manchester, NH is making the arrangements.

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! "
from "The Chambered Nautilus" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD.