As you walk through Chelsea across 23rd Street from the #1 train, you will see lots of fine old townhouses,

landmark apartment buildings,

and the local barber shop looking very upscale and chic. The old railroad bed, now the High Line,  is above you and even on a cold day, people are meandering along, looking down.

This is a nice walk. It leads to the streets west of Tenth Avenue, where hundreds of art galleries lurk.

We chose 25th Street in order to see and enjoy works by Kiki Smith, Beth Carter, and Richard Serra.

Smith’s works highlight her views of women, animals and their role in the cosmos. They cover the gamut in art forms, including sculpture, tapestry,

glass painting,

(Source: pacegallery.com)and other media.

They are mostly huge in scale and wonderful. You can see her works at the Pace Gallery through March 29.

We then visited the monumental Serra exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery on West 24th Street through March 15. These mysterious gatherings of monoliths appear uniform

until you get very close and then you see the differences in detail,

texture and  color. If you didn’t think you liked this kind of thing, you might, like me, end up with a little more perspective.

Our next stop was the Bertrand Delacroix Gallery

to see the dreamlike, mythological man-beasts created by Beth Carter in her exhibit, Dancing with Morpheus, there through March 18. Her minotaurs,

(Source: fineartconoisseur.com)

animal-human forms,

(Source: nyartsbeat.com

and horses

(Source: pinterest.com)

are strangely beautiful and moving.

These artists are giants in their field and, thankfully, all still alive. Whether you make it to these or other exhibits, the art is there, it’s free and they even let me take pictures.