Friday, July 18, 2025
A 1962 Airstream Classic is a vintage traveling camper known for its reflective aluminum finish. Long-distance travelers often use them as temporary homes, but one local Airstream serves as a traveling high-end jewelry boutique.
Beatriz Salinas, 55, of Point Lookout, is the creator of BEA, a boutique on trailer wheels. She brings it to events and private parties around the Long Beach area.
Salinas, who grew up in Queens, comes from a family of artists. Her father was a sculptor, and her mother was a fashion designer. Her youngest brother is a professional photographer.
“When I was little, I used to draw,” she said. “I would draw everything. I would follow my dad around, and look what I did.”
Even though her father was an artist, he discouraged Beatriz from studying art in college, thinking she wouldn’t make any money from it, and instead encouraged her to become a lawyer. She spent two years at St. John’s University, where she earned an associate’s degree in liberal arts in 1989, and then transferred to Hofstra University, unsure of what to do with her life.
After graduating, Salinas tried to move on from art, working in sales for a few years. But she realized that “pantyhose and suits” weren’t for her. So she took some art classes at Baruch and Hunter colleges, and discovered that her passion was photography.
After getting married in 2001, she enrolled at the International Center of Photography in Manhattan. But just before her classes started, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, two blocks from her apartment. She ran away from the smoke with her camera in hand, but eventually decided to put her career plans on hold for a year after the attacks.
During her break, she started a knitting business, and made hats and scarves for boutiques in SoHo. Bloomingdale’s placed a large order for her knitted items, but she declined it because she wanted to focus on photography.
She returned to ICP in 2002 for a yearlong intensive program. At the end of the program, the students typically hold a gallery show, at which people can view their work. “That’s how I met The New York Times,” Salinas said. “They saw my work and they loved it. They hired me right on the spot.”
Salinas was a freelance documentary photographer for The Times for 15 years. Working alongside a writer, she would take pictures of people, and often their apartments. She noticed little things, and took photos of them: With a subject’s permission, she would look through their belongings and capture small — often unseen — items.
“I started being attracted to all these little things that I didn’t really know what they meant,” Salinas recounted.
She had seen an Airstream, and had the idea of opening up a shop inside one. She searched online forums, and finally found a man in Illinois who renovated and sold the trailers. He was selling a 1962 Airstream Bambi that he had renovated. It was from Arizona, and at one point its occupants were snakes and scorpions.
While the movers drove her new camper to Long Island, they hit a pothole and the bottom fell off. Finding places to fix Airstreams is difficult. Luckily, they broke down near a repair shop in Ohio that could repair the vehicle.
“It was a lot of work,” Salinas recounted. “A lot of work.”
The small holes from the missing rivets led to years of leaks. At first, she saw patching the holes as a jewelry project, because she loves working with metal. But the sheer number of leaks was overwhelming, and she had to hire someone to find all of them.
Salinas struggled to balance time at photo shoots and time with her two children. She started experimenting with small sculptures as a hobby, and her first miniature carving was a dolphin made of wax. She wasn’t sure what to do with the figurine until she shaped it into a ring.
In 2018 she began exploring the world of jewelry making, but soon realized that she needed to learn more than she could by watching YouTube videos. A year later she became a full-time student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She filled her portfolio while caring for her now teenaged kids.
At the institute, she met a diamond setter, learned computer-aided design and began building her ideas on a computer. She graduated from FIT in 2021 with a degree in fashion and fashion jewelry design.
“All my pieces are a little bit sculptural,” Salinas said, “and I think I get that from my dad.”
She shares her passion for art with her father. He made life-size sculptures, and she makes miniature figurines. Both of them can easily visualize and complete a creation without following a reference.
Salinas held a grand opening for BEA on May 26. Much of the jewelry she creates draws inspiration from her memories, and aquatic life. She offers bracelets and necklaces, and also repairs jewelry. She brought the camper to events at the Sands Beach Club, in Atlantic Beach, Ted’s Fishing Station, in Point Lookout, and Toast Coffee & Kitchen. Upcoming events that she plans to take part in include Arts in the Plaza, in Kennedy Plaza, next month.
