On the original ArtHop night, the first Thursday of each month, venues in downtown Fresno and the Tower District will be open 5-8 p.m. These include galleries, studios, museums and retail establishments.

On the third Thursday of each month, ArtHop will feature venues in other areas. These will include venues in Fig Garden, north Fresno and Clovis. The first "metropolitan and outlying areas" ArtHop will take place Jan. 17.

The decision to split ArtHop in two was made after an online poll.

Is it a good idea to have two ArtHops? Only time will tell, but I'm skeptical.

Having two nights risks diluting the impact of the event. While separating out the "suburban" galleries and studios and giving them their own night might give them more exposure, I think that what's more likely to happen is that the "second" ArtHop each month will be a weak cousin to the first.

ArtHop isn't just extended hours of operation. It's a mindset, and I happen to think that it works best as an urban mindset. The event works best when venues are clustered in the urban core and people can drift easily from one to another -- you're never more than five minutes away by car from another. I'm not sure that driving from one suburban location to another is a real "ArtHop experience." When I've visited such suburban venues, just the travel time alone kind of eats up the evening.

Another issue: some venues listed on the ArtHop map are duds. I should know, because I've gone to a lot of them. And if the Fresno Arts Council doesn't start getting a little more selective about who it's willing to include in ArtHop, I'm going to start writing about those duds. Going to a restaurant, coffee house or furniture store where there are a few pieces of art on the walls is not the same thing as going to a gallery, studio or museum in which art is the primary consideration.

I appreciate the impulse of these venues to join in the ArtHop phenomenon, but there's a question of credibility at stake for the ArtHop "brand." I'm also becoming increasingly grouchy about the reliability of the newly redesgned ArtHop Web site. Now that responsibility for updating monthly shows has been shifted to participants, many of the entries are incomplete or out-of-date. Add to that venues on the ArtHop Web site that are closed or non-participants, and things start looking a little shaky.

In the meantime, the downtown ArtHop is all set for 5-8 p.m. Thursday. My advance pick of the night is Kristopher Stallworth's "Periphery: The Urban Landscape at Night," a photo series on display at Corridor 2122. (I've included one of the show's works at the top of this blog item.) Curator Jim Heitzeberg describes the show:

In this B/W series (print size 30”x 30”) the artist concentrates his attention on the peripheral area just outside suburban development. Using only car headlights for illumination features within this landscape are isolated from their surroundings. The resulting images are mysterious, evocative and engaging.

Sounds intriguing. See you at the Hop.