On Valentine’s Day morning, hundreds of students were delighted to receive a surprise delivery of fresh roses and an intimate note from their friends and lovers during Fine Lines’ beloved annual rose sale.
“Delivery day is my favorite part of the rose sale,” junior and editor-in-chief Ansuya Bisbey said. “There’s a lot of work we do beforehand but giving roses to people during school is so much fun and it’s always interesting to see people’s reactions and surprise at receiving a rose.”
The tradition began more than two decades ago as a way to raise money and ever since, students have flocked to main street the week before Valentine’s Day to place orders for their loved ones. “The rose sale is a good opportunity for students in the school to be able to give back to people that they really like, whether it’s friends, significant others, even teachers, which I really like,” senior Jasmine Chen, editor-in-chief said. “Everyone’s gonna be happy to receive a flower. I don’t think anyone’s gonna be upset. They’re gonna be like, ‘Oh, my God, you’re thinking of me.’”
Fine Lines is RM’s literary magazine club that has been at the school for more than 40 years—their annual print issue has won many prestigious art awards, including the NSPA Pacemaker and the CSPA Gold Crown and Gold Circle.
At their weekly meetings, the club reviews and criticizes the art of students hoping to be featured in their print issue at the end of the year. Submissions are not limited to traditional visual art mediums—music, writing, photography, and film are also accepted and published. “Fine Lines is unique because when we receive the submissions, we review them together and we give feedback. It’s a chance for people to grow and improve,” Bisbey said.
Ever since the rose sale was created, many clubs have followed Fine Lines lead of holding a Valentine’s fundraiser. “We’ve been doing it for so long that it’s encouraged more clubs to also fundraise with events like these. Because RM as a whole doesn’t do too many fundraising events, I’m glad to see more clubs are doing them, even if it does mean that there’s a lot more competition,” Chen said.
The planning for the actual rose sale begins weeks before February 14. RMBC video promotions are filmed, social media ads are created and physical banners and flyers must be printed and made. Then the day before first period delivery on Valentine’s Day, members of Fine Lines gather to dethorn the roses and attach the notes.
This year, the club bought hundreds of roses from Potomac Floral Wholesale to supply demand. People helping out at the dethorning included members of both Fine Lines and Black Maskers, which often partner with Fine Lines in their events. “It’s super fun and therapeutic,” Bisbey said.
Junior Kimberly Lee, a member of Fine Lines, was present at the dethorning, helping remove thorns, cut ribbons and sort the notes by room number. “I really wanted to help contribute to Fine Lines. I thought this would be a really fun way for me to come and help out. And these roses will eventually go to people who want to give roses to maybe their friends or their Valentine,” she said.
Lee has submitted some of her competition pieces to the magazine before. She typically works with charcoal and graphite pencil. “I really like the idea of Fine Lines since… it promotes more of the artsy side of RM,” she said. “I think I would consider myself more artistic. I’m very involved in our own school’s National Arts Honor Society. I serve as the vice president there, so I’m more involved in the arts side of RM.”
Freshman Lucie Vidh was a publicity editor helping at the dethorning. She joined and applied for a position after being drawn by the club’s tri-fold at the club fair. “They offered me one of the magazines that they had published and it was just really cool… I ended up joining, and I think it’s the club that I’ve been most involved in,” she said. “I feel like I’m a part of a community. Dethorning roses is fun. I smell like roses after and just overall, I enjoy it all.”
Junior Auden Shoemaker, another publicity editor, joined the club this year. “I decided to join because I found it really connected with Black Maskers,” they said. “Fine Lines is more literature based, which I think I enjoy more. I think if I knew more about Fine Lines my freshman year… I would have joined earlier.”
Shoemaker works in a variety of art mediums and they plan to eventually submit to the publication. “I enjoy digital art a lot. I like writing a lot. I think writing is a very expressionist way of portraying something, and it can really be used really impactfully to cause change. I do theater… and I am trying to play the piano,” they said.
However, their favorite form overall would be poetry. “I love poetry. I love the history of poetry. I love just how loose yet constrained of a form it is, how much you can get out of just writing in such a short way. How poetry can say a lot with so little words. I prefer shorter poetry than long poetry.”
Personally, they bought a rose for Andrew Potvin, the technical director that works closely with both Fine Lines and Black Maskers. “[I choose] red, classic red. It’s so romantic. It’s such a symbol of romance.”
Shoemaker is a huge fan of the community events that are a trademark of Fine Lines—they attended the dethorning, delivery, and coffeehouse fundraiser that the club held Valentine’s day evening. “I love how Fine Lines is so involved in the school community, with fundraisers, with the rose sale, with all the coffeehouses—just everything they do outside of weekly meetings,” they said.”I love how important it is to the school community… It cultivates a place where you can write a little bit more than just for fun.”
The evening after the rose deliveries, from 4:30-6:30, Fine Lines held a second fundraiser: their Valentine’s Coffeehouse, the second one of the school year. At the event which is typically held three to four times a school year, students can sign up to perform and display their art. “The basics of the coffeehouses are the same: performances, karaoke, snacks. However, the themes are different and sometimes the food,” Bisbey said. “For the Valentine’s one, we will likely have a lot of friends or couples in attendance and maybe some V-Day treats and songs to sing to. The vibes are also different because of the seasons, holidays, and weather.”
The attendance of this coffeehouse was lower than usual, though some preferred the more intimate atmosphere. “There weren’t that many people there, which kind of lowered how professional people were, which was fun, but it was mostly friends,” Shoemaker said. “It’s a place where you’re… joking with and paying attention with close friends. Kind of seeing a small musician you like, where you can just huddle up, sit in three chairs and just watch and clap and talk. It’s a very friendly thing.”
Shoemaker’s favorite highlight of the evening was the singing. “The singing is wonderful. Singing is so pretty. Some of the people here have such pretty voices. I love singing,” they said. “Sometimes, people bring art which is nice to see, but the singing is just majestic.”
Junior Evyia Makrodmitri joined Fine Lines in her freshman year and ever since, she has presented her many artworks at all the coffeehouses. This time, she presented several new pieces she’s worked on including a large-scale piece made in honor of Dostoyevsky’s birthday. “I ended up finishing the piece about a month later, but I really like this piece because I put a lot of details into it,” she said. “I put lots of different characters and scenes from his stories, and I weaved them into a bigger piece with his wife in the background, and several papers scattered across his desk, the writer that he is.”
“[Art] is a great way for me to express my ideas. An artwork I submitted to Fine Lines was me analyzing two characters and comparing them without writing an actual essay,” Makrodimitri said. “It’s easier for me to show visual symbolism and put it into an artwork than write.”
Another piece she did was inspired by an IA she had to write for IB History. “It’s more of a comedic piece, but I made a little drawing of Lenin looking at his phone. Of course, he’s never seen a cellular phone before,” she said. “But the idea is that he’s inspired by reels of Sergey Nechayev, a revolutionary who’s telling the revolutionaries they have to be very strict and sigma as leaders of a large-scale revolution.”
Her favorite piece made in 2025 would be one based on a “Crime and Punishment,” quote often taken out of context. “‘Your greatest sin is that you’ve suffered for nothing.’ That’s the quote. But I turned it around in the artwork, I tried to turn around the meaning of the quote in order to give it the context that it had in the book, which actually made it a very ironic quote,” she said.
All people are encouraged to submit their work no matter their skill level—to both the year-ending magazine or to the coffeehouses. “I think they definitely push you to put your art out there… [and] encourages you to put your art out there for other people to see,” Lee said. “I think it definitely is more beginner friendly. You don’t feel as pressured to make it look as professional or as expert-y as art that you see online that are made by famous artists. So I think it’s definitely a good way for anyone to come and submit.”
