Recognized as the “most accomplished and respected wood sculptor in the Northwest,” Roy Setziol was born in Philadelphia and grew up in cosmopolitan Buffalo. After graduating with a degree in art from Elmhurst College he married Ruth Davis in 1940. In 1941 he completed a theological degree and then worked as a minister in Bennington, New York. During WWII he served as a chaplain with the U.S. Army 43rd Infantry in the South Pacific. Soon after the war he joined his family in Portland, Oregon.

With Ruth supporting the family Roy began his career as an artist. Setziol’s art has been influenced by his experience interacting with the immigrant communities in Buffalo, the art he observed in the South Pacific, his personal interest in European art, and his experience living in the Northwest. He is a “sculptor who happens to work with wood,” in part because of the ready availability of the material in Oregon. Long admired by the architectural community, his work has been described as monumental and intimate, symbolic and abstract, geometric and organic. It is rich in color and texture with many of his pieces employing a grid system he discovered nearly 40 years ago carving a piece for the Menucha Conference Center in the Columbia Gorge. Roy has been commissioned for an extraordinary number of public pieces including those that can be seen at the Salishan Lodge, the Salem Public Library, the Child Development Center in Portland, the Chevron Building in Lagos, Nigeria, and most recently at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. His sculptures are also in the collections of the Salem Art Association, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, and the Contemporary Crafts Museum and Gallery.