YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (WKBN) – What do you see when you look at a marble? For James Rogers, Jr., it has a deep meaning.

“Memories of me and Billy. Billy was my brother who passed away some years ago. Me and my brother used to play marbles. We had bunk beds upstairs, you know, and we had shoe boxes. You know, we put our marbles in the shoe boxes, and we would take them outside and play,” he said.

When he looks at snow, he sees something different as well.

“Some people say it looks like a moonscape, but you know, you make up your own interpretation,” Rogers said.

Even a pair of shoes hanging from a power line is much more than just that in the mind of Rogers.

“It’s like an unattended public art, because the people who put the shoes up here, I doubt very much whether they’re artists, but what they do is it leaves something for me,” he said.

Rogers has been an artist since he was a child. Now, he is being honored during Black History Month with his first solo art exhibit at Youngstown State University’s Bliss Hall, called “Alumni Spotlight: James Rogers Jr: This, That and the Other (The Way I See It).”

“It’s hard to put into words because, you know, like I’ve been at it so long and for me to get this recognition, it means the world to me,” Rogers said.

Rogers graduated from YSU in 1972 then returned in the early 90s to study graphic design and photography. He’s been taking photos ever since.

“I fell in love with the camera,” he said.

The exhibit showcases art from as far back as the 90s to the present time.

“Things that people might overlook… Finding beauty in the ordinary, the mundane,” he said.

The exhibit will be on display until February 25, in the Judith Rae Solomon Gallery, and it’s open to the public from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.