Through the gnarled and mud-encrusted tentacles of an uprooted tree, he spotted ghastly creatures. They had long, narrow visages with puckered lips, protruding noses and snake-like appendages sprouting from their heads. Rather than run, he drew his knife and spent hours carving those images that lurked in the darkest corners of his imagination.

Today, 40 years after Goreniuc left Romania, those faces stare down from the wall where they are mounted—much like an accomplished hunter's trophies—in a back room of the 59-year-old sculptor's home.

One can glimpse Goreniuc's pride and joy nestled among a forest of 120 other sculptures in the Beijing International Sculpture Park, which was constructed for the 2008 Olympic Games. His creation, Space Dance for Peace IV, won the top sculpture prize in China's International Exhibition and Symposium, so the government purchased it. Goreniuc, a Sunnyvale resident, recently returned from a trip to China, where he oversaw the installation of his sculpture and took part in the park's opening ceremony on Oct. 7.

"When the Olympic Games start, millions of people will see Space Dance IV," Goreniuc says.

There are no goblins lurking amidst the geometric branches of the original Space Dance IV, a 12-foot, 1,500-pound red monster of corten steel standing guard on Goreniuc's front lawn. It has been treated, however, as if it was a threat to various communities since its birth in 1983.

In 1985, the sculpture emerged from its creator's secret bat cave—the studio in San Jose where Goreniuc cages the crane that enables him to fit those heavy pieces of steel together—and it was planted in front of the Sunnyvale community center. But some elderly residents later complained to the city, saying they didn't like the sculpture, and the city council responded by asking Goreniuc to remove it after one year.

"Some old ladies from a retirement club or something got all up in arms over the sculpture," Goreniuc says. He won't say how much Beijing paid for his sculpture, but hints that if Sunnyvale wanted it back they would have to pay $100,000 for it.

His critics, some of whom shower his sculpture with eggs on occasion, should try floating into Goreniuc's peaceful galaxy. Knock on his door and he is likely to pull you in for a glass of wine, as he did with neighbor Mario Vazquez when the sculpture first appeared in 1997.

"I didn't really know what the sculpture was to start with," Vazquez says. "I stopped in and said, 'Paul, what's this?' "

It seems Goreniuc is in a comfort zone, as he was in the woods of the Carpathians where he discovered his art, on a recent morning as he talks in his darkened living room. It's a room inhabited by the lifelike bronze busts of such people as King Mihai I of Romania; Sue Ellen Hinshaw, an opera singer; and the unlikely images of a wrinkle-faced bulldog and an "immortalized" Goreniuc. Many people, including King Mihai I himself, commissioned Goreniuc to do these busts. The ones in his living room are copies of the originals.

Vazquez recalled the first time Goreniuc gave him a tour through his home, where Renaissance paintings appear unassumingly in ornate, gold-framed portraits along the wall, and Goreniuc's abstract sculptures are perched on white columns around the dining room table.

"I didn't really know too much about him," Vazquez admitted. "He was just another neighbor. From what I saw in his house, he impressed me as the kind of guy who could do anything."

On this morning, as Goreniuc stands before his King Mihai I, he eagerly explains the concept behind Space Dance IV. He conceived the Space Dance series in 1983, although he says he can't pinpoint what exactly inspired the sculpture. However, his background might lend some explanation. Goreniuc was born in 1942, when much of Europe was embroiled in World War II, and the sculpture was conceived while the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was in full swing. Peace, Goreniuc says, is as essential to life as air and water.

Space Dance IV represents two spaces, which include one of an atom and one of the earth and its galaxy. Just as the earth orbits the sun, electrons circle the nucleus of an atom. If the balance of the atom in the case of a nuclear reaction is upset, an explosion would occur, in turn upsetting the balance of the earth.

"It's a matter of opening your mind in your learning to appreciate other people's way of thinking," Goreniuc says.