Nationally known for her original, figurative wall hangings, Roslyn Logsdon uses a technique that marries the craft of traditional rug-hooking with the fine arts. Originally schooled as a painter, her experience with that medium gave her the design and drawing skills needed to translate architectural and figurative subjects into sumptuous fabric art.
Logsdon’s rug-hooking technique is indigenous to America. After 1840, when Asian jute first became available in the U.S. (it was used to wrap raw commodities and to make grain and feed sacks), American women invented rug-hooking as another method of using scraps of wool to produce carpets and decorative pieces. Thin strips of fabric were pulled through a burlap mesh backing (burlap is made from jute) on which original, although primitive, designs were drawn. A special hook was used–and still is–to form small, tightly packed loops of material. Today, the mesh is available with preprinted floral or abstract designs done from stencils. Logsdon’s wall hangings are unique because she creates her own imagery rather than using preprinted mesh.
She began her traditional art education as a child, taking classes at the Brooklyn Museum art school and going on to do undergraduate and graduate work in art at Brooklyn College, both in New York. From 1967 to 1968, she studied painting with Nell Sonnemann in graduate school at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and credits the artist with helping her achieve a sense of design and color in her work. Under Sonnemann’s influence, Logsdon learned how to paint colorful abstractions in acrylic.