[music] The dunes are constantly shifting and shaping by the wind.

The wind basically designs them.

They're bigger than most people expect.

These dunes are 22,000 acres, so it's one of the largest dunes complex in North America.

A lot of people wonder how the dunes get here.

It's from erosion, from rain, and weather, and eventually these rocks turn into sand, and create this giant dune structure that we have that's really incredible.

It's 550 feet at its highest point, which is a big dune.

The dunes simply put, they're magical.

[music] [background noise] My name is Colleen Gnos.

I am a fine artist and muralist, and I'll be creating a mural for the Coastal Stories Project.

My name is Chachi Ramirez, and I'm the lead filmmaker for this project.

We're going to do a documentary that's going to give a visual, and verbal history of the different groups that we're represented.

We're also going to put a mural on a wall that the road goes out to the dunes, and then we'll also put interpretive signs throughout the city.

Visual learning is really one of the best ways to understand your culture and your history, because really it's a discovery for me as a filmmaker to answer that question.

How did your culture interact with the dunes?

With a project this size, the town, the mayor, and the Dunes Center has asked me to capture the history through the eyes of coastal stories, and the population's connection to the ocean, to the dunes.

The mission that I love is that they're capturing underrepresented voices.

Voices that aren't commonly heard, because Guadalupe was a big melting pot of many different cultures coming in, and coming out, and that's what helped shape the town.

[music] The way I describe Guadalupe is that it is just this little a hidden gem, a cultural anomaly if you will.

We're four miles from the ocean yet a lot of people don't even know it exists.

Guadalupe is a little page out of history.

It's relatively unchanged compared to much of the more developed areas on the central coast.

It really does tell the story about California when you think about how small of a town, and the agriculture, and the people that were here.

[music] [background noise] The Coastal Stories Project really is an opportunity to amplify the voices for the community that typically doesn't have a voice to the wider population, and it's to be able to tell their story, and their relationship with the dunes.

[music] Getting to work with the Nipomo Dune C.. They are such a cool organization focused on preserving the dunes, educating the community about the dunes.

The Guadalupe-Nipomo Dune Center is a little hidden gem here in Guadalupe.

It is a museum where we showcase some of the history, and culture of Guadalupe, and the dunes.

We're also education partner with the local schools, particularly for the underserved children in our community.

More importantly, we take these kids on field trips out to the dunes.

Taking them out to the dunes, and showing them everything that there is out there.

It's just an amazing place that is shocking that people don't know as much about.

What's important for me is collecting the community interviews, and the community feedback, and reading the story of the town.

Then, as artists, it's through our lens.

That's our filter of how we depict the story.

This is my first few pieces of research.

This was a collection of town stories of Guadalupe.

I have a binder of different interviews that have been collected by a lot of people that are no longer with us.

When Colleen came in her respective knowing that, let's talk about the first people.

When I say first people, there were many people before that.

[music] The Chumash went all the way from Monterey County, all the way to Malibu.

The Chumash lived right in those dunes because they had fresh water.

They were near the ocean.

The Chumash [chuckles] were here first.

They were just not hunters and gatherers.

They were boat builders.

They built homes.

They were scientists.

They were archeologists.

They were astronomers.

You'll go into the dunes, and you can find Chumash artifacts out in the dunes.

It's cool.

I think it's really cool what we have here.

[music] I think the thing that I am most excited about with this project is just the art, and the beauty, and the story that it's going to bring to this community.

Public art is a measure of how sophisticated a society is, because the way a society treats, and views its artists is a measure of how it treats and views its people.

Through art, and expression is the eyes of the artist, but then the curiosity of the person that's looking at it.

I think some people underestimate what this place is.

The opportunity to share stories with them, and to talk to them about the history, and the culture of other peoples' but also their own, I think, is one of the things I'll be most proud of.

For this to live on, and to think that it will educate people in the future.

There's a certain amount of immortality in being able to tell a story that's not forgotten.

It's a wonderful experience for the storytellers.

This mural is going to be a permanent fixture in the community.

A mural can have huge impact to the community.

They embrace it.

They begin to love it.

It becomes part of their landscape.

We stand on the shoulders of people before us.

This is going to give some people the opportunity to see some history.

I think that's our job as artists is to tell a story because we're living it.

We're living it right now.

[music]