“Storyteller,” a new painting at the Bainbridge Library, has a story of its own to tell.

The work, to be dedicated in a public ceremony this afternoon, honors island daycare provider Stephania Alene Price, who died last October.

The piece was painted and donated by Price’s sister, New Mexico artist Mary Richardson.

Price’s Fort Ward daycare, Storyteller Hollow, was a second home for nine years to the children and families who went there.

“Kids were her life, even though she never had any,” said Leslie Rothbaum, whose daughter attended the daycare and who is organizing the dedication.

“We couldn’t do it earlier,” she said. “We were all too emotional.”

For the five weeks of Price’s hospital stay – the result of complications from a simple surgical procedure – parents of Storyteller Hollow children banded together to keep the daycare running.

Their efforts were evidence of the extended family Price had forged over the years of the daycare’s existence.

Price began her childcare career on Bainbridge in the fall of 1985 with Bainbridge Babies, a daycare then located on Finch Place.

Star Kelly joined Bainbridge Babies six months later, and the two became friends.

Price and Kelly became business partners in the fall of 1993, opening a daycare at Price’s Fort Ward home – named for the figurines of the Native American storyteller that Price’s mother had given to both women.

In Navajo culture, the storyteller is the matriarch who carries the tales that embody the tribe’s accumulated wisdom to the next generation.

“I think that’s how Steph saw herself,” Richardson said, “as that grandmother, telling stories.”

Kelly worked with Price for six years, relocating to Montana in 1999. The partners were a study in contrasts.

“She was more outspoken and I was quieter,” Kelly said. “But no matter what, the kids knew that she loved them and I loved them.

“These were our kids.”

The pair grew close to most of the families as well. Many of the children in their care stayed from the age of two months to 12 years.

Blakely third-grader Molly Harrison and her sister, first-grader Abigail, who spent nine and seven years at Storyteller Hollow, respectively, share happy memories of the daycare and Price.

“Every time we had a sleep-over, she made us Frito pie,” Abigail Harrison said, “and in the morning we’d have pancakes or waffles with whipped cream and hot cocoa with whipped cream.”

Rothbaum notes that her daughter called Price “her other mother.”

“She was so good at what she did,” Rothbaum said. “When (daughter) Liberty had her bat mitzvah, she had Steph be her speaker.”

Price could not have her own children, and efforts to adopt fell through. She gave her love to surrogate kids – nearly 100 received her care – and their families.

“The thing that struck me,” Rothbaum said, “was that even when kids outgrew the daycare, she’d hold retreats for them.”

Some, like Monica Meell, Brad Girtz and Nick Rothbaum, who had been cared for there as children, came back to work for Price and Kelly.

After Price’s death, Anne Price-St. John, Price’s sister and a trained children’s counselor, spent time with the Storyteller kids.

Price, who had recently lost both parents, may have prepared the children to cope with death, Rothbaum believes; she made a point of introducing them to the cycle of life through daycare pets and visits with elders at island convalescent homes.

After the initial grief and shock, the Storyteller families planned the painting project to be a memorial.

“The parents decided they wanted a picture of the storyteller,” Richardson said. “It was Leslie who asked me to paint it.”

A first attempt in pastel didn’t work.

“The last few years Steph had been learning to use pastel, so that’s what we had in common. It was too hard because we’d shared that,” she said.

Richardson then tackled the portrait of her sister from a photograph of Price working on a pastel drawing. Only after completing that picture was Richardson ready to undertake the storyteller, this time in oil paint.

The image, usually rendered in three dimensions, is ubiquitous throughout the American Southwest, but Richardson elected to work from memory.

The storyteller’s eyes are closed and her mouth roundly open, while Lilliputian children clamber on the mountainous figure. Like Price, the figure wholeheartedly inhabits the story she tells.

Price’s ashes have been scattered in the Rio Grande, at the same site where her parents’ ashes were dispersed. But her life, embodied in the painting, is a story to be retold by the children she helped raise.

With the daycare closed and the property up for sale, the painting is a tangible reminder of Price’s legacy in the community.

“I wanted that painting to have a place,” Rothbaum said, “so that the children can come here and have something of her.”