Catalina Salter Martin

Last weekend, our granddaughter Catalina graduated from Queens College, Cambridge University where she has been studying History for the past three years. Born and raised in Madrid, Spain she is the third child of her California-born father Hayden and her Spanish mother Ana.  Like her amazing older siblings, Nico and Inés, Cata has embraced life from day one.

As children, Cata and Inés primarily spoke Spanish until beginning school at Madrid’s Lycée Français.  For High School, they transferring to Runnymede British International School in Madrid where they perfected their English, excelled in their academic studies, and played team volleyball.  From the age of 16 on, our granddaughters spent their summers studying abroad on scholarships they each applied for on their own initiative in an effort to keep expanding their horizons.

Following one summer study program in the States, Cata flew to Missouri for her first visit to Boomerang Creek.  Kit and I picked her up at the Kansas City Airport and spent the day at the historic Spanish-style architecture at the Plaza and the nearby Nelson Art Gallery. She expressed an interest in seeing the Asian art collection, but it was in the Nelson’s Modern art wing that I believe Cata’s love of art had a moment of true clarity.  Standing in front of a 1940’s painting by Latvian-born Modernist Mark Rothko, she connected with the artist’s abstract composition of parallel bands of dark brown and black color that evoke powerful human emotions.

That summer at Boomerang Creek,  Cata crimped her first pie crust, assembled Mediterranean summer salads, baked banana bread, and visited the multi-generational Beckmeyer family farm and vineyard.  She then returned to Madrid where continued her high school studies at Runnymede. After graduating, she was offered a place at Cambridge University in April 2021; but due to the pandemic, she had an unexpected gap year that she describes as an eye-opening experience. 

To fill the gap year, Cata applied to and was accepted into a three-month program at Cowhouse Studios in Wexford, Ireland—a progressive art school and studio in a rural setting about thirty miles from Dublin.  She shared the experience with ten other students from around the world and described its importance to me recently. “I had always thought of drawing and painting as a solitary hobby of mine, but at Cowhouse we shared rooms, materials, meals and studios alike.  After the pandemic, the experience of living and working together in a rural, close-knit community was a joy and relief.”

Later that year, Cata spent a semester in Florence, Italy where her love of music and art continued to thrive. She had earlier trained as a Classical singer as part of a summer program at Oberlin College’s Music Conservatory in Ohio where Kit, Hayden’s mother Linda Salter, and Cata’s great grandmother Katharine Hayden Salter went to college. While in Florence, she primarily focused on her love of music and poetry, sang with the Florence University choir, and continued to paint.  

Following her gap year, Cata began her studies at Cambridge University in the UK.  Feeling like a pause from her artwork, she took courses like Modern Europe 1789-1914 and Rethinking Europe from the Mediterranean Shores that reshaped her worldview. She also studied topics such as migration, nationalism, and political history that she says, “made my art seem disconnected and lacking in academic weight.”  But that would change and the two passions would come together during her third year at Cambridge when she did a research summer internship at Black Mountain College in Ashville, North Carolina. 

Speaking of her time there, she wrote, “Black Mountain College showed me how artistic communities are deeply embedded in historical and social movements.” There, Cata hosted talks, screenings and performances by local artists. “The experience confirmed for me that this intersection of art history and community engagement is not only intellectually compelling, but something I’d love to pursue professionally.”

Last week, Cata graduated with full pomp and ceremony from Queens College, Cambridge and she has already set in motion plans for the coming fall and year.  She has applied to the Fall 2025 intern program at Spannocchia—a rural farm estate in Tuscany similar to the Cow House Studio—where she would work with a small group of interns from around the world for three months. Interns work in the estate’s extensive gardens, assist local cooks in the kitchen, tend farm animals, and serve wine and meals for residents who travel to Spannocchia as Kit and I did in 2010 and 2013 to paint, write and cook.

As for now, Cata has applied to and been accepted to Courtauld Institute in London where she will begin a Masters in the History of Art program beginning next year. Founded by collectors and philanthropists in the 1930s, Courtauld exists in the spirit of the founders of the Black Mountain Institute, and offers a course of study that Cata hopes to pursue—“Experiencing Modernism:  Eutopia, Politics, and Times of Turmoil.”

Which brings me back to Cata’s “Ah, ha!” moment a few summers ago in Missouri when she stood transfixed in front of  Mark Rothko’s abstract painting at the Nelson Art Museum and sensed that someday art history would become her life’s passion.