ART : A Sea of Serenity in a World of Turbulence : Installation: Bruria Finkel uses water to trigger ‘chemical healing’ through her work.

There are times when an artist chooses to put her talent, energy and time in the service of others. She decides that art should not be just for those who can afford to pay for it, but for those who need it the most.

Santa Monica artist Bruria Finkel subscribes to that philosophy. In 1982, she was one of the founders of the Santa Monica Arts Commission. Today, she is chairwoman of the panel’s Art in Public Places committee.

So when she was presented with the opportunity to make art for a new building for Step Up on 2nd, a center for recovering mentally ill adults in Santa Monica, she gladly seized it.

Step Up, originally called Project Return Center, has been serving mentally ill individuals who live in the community with families, in group homes, in board-and-care facilities or in private apartments since 1984. It also runs support groups for the families and friends of mentally ill people.

The agency opened the building at 1328 2nd St. in Santa Monica last December. Free educational, vocational and social services for adults are available seven days a week. There are also 36 single-occupancy housing units.

Finkel was brought into the project by architect Bradly Nolan Fenton and Susan Dempsay, executive director of Step Up on 2nd, before the building was completed.

“As artists, we work alone. It’s not often that we are called that way,” said Finkel. “It was a great opportunity to work with Bradly, the team that built the building and Susan Dempsay, and to contribute something of my talent to the community.”

The only guidance Dempsay gave Finkel regarding artwork in the dining area was that “water is an essential item,” Finkel said. She remembers some early discussion about a fountain, but she could see there was no room for one. “I like to deal with problematic issues like that,” she said.

Finkel’s imaginative solution was to create a terrazzo installation, “A Wall of Water, A Curtain of Light,” which sweeps across an entire wall in the dining area. Water gently streams down, collecting in a trough before being recycled. A bench sits in front of the trough.

Her multicolored, geometrically abstract water wall has, “in a simple way, altered the architectural space and achieved an atmosphere,” she said. “We’ve created this warm, comforting space with the sound. But if it were just the sound, we could just play a tape. Water alters the ions in the air. It’s a chemical healing.”

A sense of healing, she said, “was the most important thing to create in the space.”

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She said was “able to apply all the ‘language’ in my art that has evolved through the years to something practical. The abstract imagery relates to the real. You can decipher it, but you have to know where to look.”

Starting with the bench, which is a “step” and a line on the wall pointing “up,” she said the abstractions of her installation actually read as “Step Up on 2nd.” The wall’s colors--blue, pink and even foggy, smoggy gray--relate to our environment, to Santa Monica’s in particular, to the colors of a sunset over the ocean. She chose to use terrazzo--in this case chips of marble and handblown colored glass in cement--because “I like things that last. I know it’s going to be there for the next 800 years,” she said.

The lighting above plays with the falling water, creating the curtain effect. For the floor below, she arranged the tiles in a pattern that complements the wall. “Just a little thought created a much greater richness to the art,” Finkel said. “The floor breaks up this very formal image. It’s in opposition to the pristineness of the wall.”

The artwork “makes the place,” said Dempsay, who is the mother of a mentally ill son. “First of all, it’s beautiful. And the sound is so relaxing. It adds a serenity and peacefulness.

Last month Finkel installed her second work of art in the building--a striking, artistic vision of a donor’s wall. Each donor’s name is on a triangle. Four large triangles come together to form a pyramid.

She has made these contributions because “I was so impressed when I met Susan and heard her approach,” Finkel said. “She respects life in a way I have never heard administrators in this field do. The attitude toward mental illness has always been to keep it quiet. Just the opposite is happening here. She’s saying, ‘Not only can they do things, they need to do things.’

For information on services provided by Step Up on 2nd, call (310) 394-6889 or write 1328 2nd St., Santa Monica, 90401.