Let us now praise the artists, those homesteaders at the mall, for going where few would go to stir the creative juices.

We are all art lovers today, drawn to the work of people who did something inspired because it was there to be done. They saw possibilities where others saw only drab, exhausted concrete. They added bold, audacious strokes to a dreary urban canvas.

And they made us all feel better for being here when their work was prematurely unveiled. It was a good day to be in Rhode Island, where those artists set up housekeeping in a parking garage.

We can put them up against artists in any town anywhere for creative selection of performance space.

They worked in couch and lamp and rug. And stealth. And an appreciation for the revealing possibilities of bringing unlikely things together.

They claimed a space beneath an I-beam and above a storage room at the Providence Place garage, where so many have cursed so loudly about shoddy design. These eight members of an artists’ collective managed to bring in furniture and enclose their digs in cinder block. They put up a door. They hung pictures on the walls.

And they hung out, off and on, for four years while shoppers performed the 20-store trudge just a few yards away.

They put themselves in the middle of their work, called Malllife, and captured it on video. Assorted Web sites have become their gallery.

The enclosed mall, the shoppers in search of unknown needs, the artists in their windowless space making quiet comment on a cultural crossroads — it’s all so wonderfully imprecise. It can take one person one way and another person another.

Thinking about that apartment in the mall reminds me of the time in a Boston museum when I rounded a corner and saw a piece of plywood with three spots of paint on it. And people stood back from it, forefingers pressed to upper lip, slowly pulling meaning from the wood.

Providence Place, of course, had a wonderful opportunity here. The retail mecca had an artist-in-residence program and didn’t even know it.

When mall security uncovered the creative outpost beneath the I-beam, it uncovered a public relations windfall that might have been celebrated on a huge banner hung from the third level and declaring there was something unique about Providence Place. Mall officials could have had some fun with this whimsical find in an unexpected place. It could have gone with the moment.

But the opportunity has apparently been lost. There will be no mall packages offering a movie, an overflowing feed at The Cheesecake Factory and a visit to a living work of art in a parking garage.

A mall spokesman called the nearby apartment illegal and irresponsible. He said the mall felt “violated.” He really did.

It’s surprising to discover that Providence Place can be so sensitive.

The apartment has been closed down. Minor criminal trespassing charges were even brought.

But when the story broke yesterday, it was a good story that made people smile, laugh and offer tributes to the determined genius of settling down in a parking garage.

There was an instant appreciation for putting something so unpredictable in the heart of a very predictable place.

It wasn’t a violation. It was a celebration.

And while Malllife might no longer be a work in progress at Providence Place, chances are good that the final scenes have yet to be shot.

bkerr@projo.com