Some artists paint on canvas. Others compose with music or write with words. Helena Amaral chose one of the oldest materials on Earth—the volcanic stone of Pico Island—and persuaded it to smile.
What began as an intimate artistic impulse has quietly become one of the Azores’ most distinctive cultural experiences. Hidden among lava fields, perched along mountain trails, nestled within ancient dry-stone walls, resting beside coastal paths, and even lying beneath the sea, more than 250 sculpted faces now invite residents and visitors alike to pause, smile back, and see the island through different eyes. Collectively known as Stone Smiles (Sorrisos de Pedra), they have transformed Pico into an open-air gallery where nature and art engage in an ongoing conversation.
Yet the story begins long before Helena Amaral ever touched volcanic basalt.
Although she made Pico Island her home, her artistic identity was first shaped thousands of miles away, on the Island of Mozambique. Arriving there as a twelve-year-old girl, she found herself immersed in a world alive with brilliant colors, carved masks, traditional dances, and visual rhythms that would remain with her throughout her life. It was there that drawing first became a necessity and painting a lifelong calling.
The journey toward becoming an artist, however, was anything but straightforward.
After a brief and unhappy attempt to study in Cape Town, South Africa, Helena returned to Mozambique before eventually moving to Lisbon, determined to pursue the artistic education she had dreamed about since childhood. Despite the reservations of her own family—even though her father himself was both a teacher and a sculptor—she persisted, studying first at the School of Decorative Arts before fulfilling her ambition of entering Fine Arts.
For nearly fifty years painting became her language.
Canvas after canvas captured fragments of memory, reflections of Africa, and the emotional landscapes that had shaped her life. But with time came an unexpected silence.
Painting, she explains, is a solitary act. As the years passed, she began to feel a quiet restlessness, a sense that another form of expression was waiting to emerge.
That search led her to the volcanic landscape of Pico. One day she picked up an angle grinder, approached a piece of lava stone, and began searching—not for a sculpture she intended to create, but for a face she believed already existed within the rock. That philosophy has remained unchanged ever since.
Each sculpture begins with discovery rather than design. Helena wanders Pico’s volcanic hills looking for stones that speak to her. There is, she says, an instant of recognition, almost of seduction, between artist and stone. Most rocks are left untouched. Only a few reveal hidden expressions waiting to be uncovered.
The work itself is demanding.
The stones are heavy. Transporting them across rugged terrain requires considerable effort. Sculpting with power tools carries constant physical risk. Installing the finished works often means climbing hillsides or traversing difficult landscapes with the help of friends, family, and longtime collaborator Terry Costa, who immediately recognized the project’s artistic potential and encouraged Helena to share it publicly.
Yet every challenge disappears the moment another smile emerges from the lava.
“I wanted to give the island a smile,” she explains. “Or perhaps, I wanted to make Pico Mountain smile.”
That simple ambition became something much larger than she ever anticipated.
The smiles quickly ceased to belong to their creator.
Villages embraced them. Residents began treating them almost as neighbors, landmarks, companions quietly watching over familiar places. Visitors started searching for them, turning their discovery into a new way of exploring Pico. Today many travelers arrive specifically to complete what has become known as the Stone Smiles Route, wandering across the island in search of sculptures hidden in forests, vineyards, lava fields, caves, coastal cliffs, and mountain trails.
For Helena, that transformation remains deeply moving.
The sculptures were born from intensely personal emotions, yet once they enter the landscape they cease to be hers alone. Each person who encounters one brings a different memory, a different feeling, a different interpretation. The artwork becomes a shared emotional experience rather than an individual creation.
Not every story has been joyful.
Some sculptures have disappeared over the years. The loss that hurt most was a piece known simply as The Philosopher, placed inside Gruta das Torres. After standing there for three years, someone removed it.
“I cried,” Helena admits.
Yet she refuses to allow those moments to overshadow the generosity shown by the overwhelming majority of people. The project has been remarkably respected, embraced by local communities who understand that these sculptures were never commercial objects but gifts—offerings left freely across the island for anyone willing to discover them.
Today Helena’s work travels far beyond the Azores. Her sculptures have been exhibited in several countries and European capitals, carrying with them the volcanic identity of Pico to audiences around the world.
Still, international recognition has not changed the way she understands her work.
She speaks less about artistic achievement than about gratitude.
Less about sculpture than about nature.
She often says she feels like a collaborator with the mountain itself. The volcano created the stone; she merely reveals the smile already hidden inside it.
It is an idea that perfectly captures both the humility and wonder that define her work.
Nearly every day Helena returns to her outdoor studio, surrounded by volcanic rock and the sculptures that continue to multiply around her. There she walks quietly among unfinished pieces, reflecting, observing, and waiting for the next face to emerge.
The project, she insists, is far from complete.
Every finished smile immediately sends her searching for another.
“It never ends,” she says. “There is always another smile waiting.”
After placing more than 250 smiling faces across Pico Island, Helena Amaral believes she has fulfilled part of her dream.
But only part.
Her greatest ambition still lies ahead.
One day, she hopes to carve a monumental sculpture—a smile so large that it becomes a permanent conversation between artist, mountain, and island, a final reminder that even the hardest volcanic stone can reveal extraordinary tenderness when approached with patience, imagination, and love.
In the end, perhaps that is the true miracle of Stone Smiles.
Helena Amaral has not simply sculpted faces from lava.
She has taught an island made of fire to smile.
In Atlântico Expresso-Natalino Vivieiros, director-photos from AE.