Ok, got it. I've renamed this question to include NetBeans, because that was the gist of my problem.
As a review, it is required that the log4j2.xml file needs to go on the classpath. While I could affect the classpath in netbeans by adding jar files to the project, I didn't initially think about finding a config file on the classpath. Anyway, once I realized that, I played around a bit in project properties, and finally figured out that just adding the folder to the 'Compile-time libraries' dialog ( in this case "r:\" ) puts the config file on the classpath, and my logging works just like it should.
Whew!
Hope this helps someone.