TURNER – The walls at the former Turner Center for the Arts are bare. Paintings and other pieces are orderly stacked in a back room at the gallery, inventoried for artists to collect their works.

A sculpture of a woman’s torso crafted from stone, brass and wood, titled “Post-Modern Lithic Momma,” is mounted on a white pedestal and labeled with the artist’s name: Michael Cooper of Bethel.

The handiwork of artist Jennifer Barron of Auburn is displayed nearby, her hand-spun wool skirt titled “Mothering,” has a card pinned to it with Barron’s name.

An empty easel stands across the room from a large Caribbean ocean scene on canvas, along with about 50 paintings lined along the floor, protected by large sheets of cardboard to keep frames from rubbing against one another.

Nancy Trider of Leeds hopes artists will claim their art before it’s locked up at the town’s municipal offices.

Trider is the former center’s “closure coordinator,” the board member responsible for making sure the collection of art at the center is returned. The artists hail from across Maine, including Patten, Brooks, Brooklyn and Smithfield, among more local towns, and it’s been tough to locate them all.

The Turner Center for the Arts is disbanded and contributing artists have until 4 p.m. Saturday – today – to pick up their property. After that, the paintings, sculptures and other works will be transported to the Turner Town Office and secured. Every artist who could be identified has received a letter by e-mail or snail mail asking them to pick up their work, and many artists did that last week, but there is a lot of art left at the center that remains unclaimed.

For any property that remains after Saturday, Town Manager Eva Leavitt said she would make every effort to locate artists and make sure their property is returned to them.

The Turner Center for the Arts closed after town residents voted April 5 to disband the municipally-based board of directors, and approved no funding for the center. Artists were left to choose between closing the center or creating a nonprofit organization to rent the gallery space.

The artists, believing they did not have the funds to create a nonprofit group, decided to disband. By mutual agreement with the Board of Selectmen, the center’s board set April 26 as the last day of occupancy.

Trider, a watercolor artist who has a gallery in her home, said the contributing artists and the center’s membership are terribly sad about the closure, because the center “was just getting to be known, we were just getting on our feet.”

Ordinarily it takes a gallery about five years, Trider said, to reach its stride, and the Turner group wasn’t that old. Its first show was in 2005, and there have been 17 since.

When the gallery was open, artists were invited to show their work, and if something sold the artist would receive 70 percent of the sale price and the center would get the rest.

Trider said the gallery did sell some work, but not a lot and not enough to generate rent.

“Everybody is exhausted at this point,” Trider said, but despite their disappointment, she and other artists are not ready to let go. They intend to hold regular peer critique sessions at Trider’s home gallery, and they have established an online forum for members to stay in touch.

Mary Beth Morrison of New Sharon, an artist who paints landscapes in acrylic, was at the gallery Friday to pick up her “A Look from the Shore,” a scene depicting a tree-lined rocky shore. Although members are sad to have lost the Turner center, Morrison is optimistic they can maintain some kind of relationship. “I really think the artists in the area will coalesce around a new thing,” she said, because the gallery enjoyed a real mix of artists and the “shows were really, really special.”

The Turner Center for the Arts held 18 shows in all, including open and juried shows, abstract paintings and photography, each carrying a different theme.

Ann Wallace of Jay, an accomplished artist with work owned by the Toronto Museum of Art as part of its permanent collection, said she’s disappointed to see the center close. She’s found friends there and liked the airy, well-lit display space for her work. “There’s no other place around here,” like it she said, holding on to her Texas canyon scene painted in watercolor.

Wallace said she planned to investigate the Laos Matolcsy Art Center in Norway and is considering participating in the annual Norway Sidewalk Art Show.

Artists do have some options, Trider said, such as the Harlow Gallery in Hallowell and other small galleries. There are active art associations, too, such as the Western Maine Art Group and Kennebec Art Association. And, of course, there are Maine’s many sidewalk art shows, like the one in Norway. But, she said, “It’s hard, hard work. Every weekend, all summer,” to sell her watercolors.

“This has been tough on everybody. We’re kind of in a regrouping phase now,” artist Liz Coburn of Buckfield said. “There have been a lot of ideas floating around and a lot of possibilities discussed,” that may bring the group back together, “but we really haven’t taken any action yet,” she said.

At this point, Coburn said, the artists will stay in touch online, but the site does require registration. If anyone is interested in joining the site, contact Coburn at [email protected].

If artists believe they left work at the Turner Center for the Arts, Leavitt has an inventory list at the Town Office and asks artists to call her at 225-3414.