Petra Mills (b. 1971) studied at Falmouth College of Arts from 2002 to 2005. She took part in the BAMS Student Medal Project in 2003 and 2004, winning a prize for her medal, Courage (see The Medal, 43 (2003), p. 102), and was selected as the BAMS ‘New Medallist’ for 2006-7; for her account of the year and the development of her BAMS medal, Swallow, see her account in The Medal, 53 (2008), pp. 47-58. The artist writes about Swallow: ‘At face value this medal is a play on ideas, an optical pun suggested by Aristotle’s observation that, “One swallow does not make a summer”. But its existence is borne of a single moment of clarity; a day when swallows sought the heavens and anything seemed possible.’