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Local couples join in 'global kiss' event

Artists assign participants to spots around Yellow Springs.

Barbara Perenic/Staff Photographer Whitney and Chris Till kiss in front of Current Cuisine where they first met during the Yellow Springs "Love-In" on Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012.

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By Megan Gildow-Anthony, Staff Writer 11:32 PM Saturday, February 11, 2012

YELLOW SPRINGS — The cold weather didn’t keep couples from turning out Saturday afternoon for a performance art piece that called for 80 couples to kiss at the same time.

The event, organized by two artists who call themselves “Jafagirls,” assigned couples to spots around downtown during Yellow Springs’ three-day Love-In festival this weekend with instructions to kiss when a bell chimed at 3:27 p.m. Saturday.

“We have people in other states who are kissing at exactly the right moment,” said Nancy Mellon, one of the event’s organizers.

“And other countries,” added Corrine Bayraktaroglu, her partner in Jafagirls.

The event wasn’t only for couples. Family members also participated.

Corinne Totty, 6, of Yellow Springs, planned to kiss her mother, Tamar Totty, and grandmother, Kipra Heermann, Saturday.

“You get to kiss the other person so they feel loved,” she explained.

“The Kiss” was a chance to participate in creating art, said Whitney Till, who attended with her husband, Chris Till.

“It seemed like fun and it’s an easy way to do art,” she said.

The Tills decided to share their kiss outside Current Cuisine, where they met in August 2006 when Whitney Till moved to town to take a job working at Glen Helen Nature Preserve.

“It might have been my first time I walked into town,” she said.

Chris Till was sitting at an outside table when he saw her and introduced himself.

“I liked brown-hair girls, and she looked really pretty,” he said.

The couple share the “perfect Yellow Springs love story,” said Whitney Till — meeting and dating in town, and then having their wedding there in 2010. Now they’re expecting their first child and plan to stay in Yellow Springs.

“I traveled around for years looking for a cool place,” said Chris Till, an attorney who played in a country band called the Corndaddys. “And I found Yellow Springs.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0373.

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