With her most recent publication lauded by the Historical Novel Society as "well-researched" and "beautiful to behold." local author and native of China X.H. Collins will read from and discuss her 2020 novel Flowing Water, Falling Flowers on May 22, the in-person event held as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Month celebration at the Davenport Public Library's Eastern Avenue Branch.

Delivering a close look at the artist's early years in New York with her husband Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe's World: Focused on Nature will find Carol Ehlers leading a May 22 program at the Rock Island Public Library's Watts-Midtown Branch, the event's presenter exploring how O'Keefe's close-up and magnified flower, leaf, and landscape paintings forever affected the way we look at nature.

With Davenport's Figge Art Museum holding a small yet impressive collection of Medieval and early-Renaissance manuscripts from Europe, the Middle East, and India, a selection of 12 of these works will be on view through August 11, as Illumination: Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts from the Figge Collection offers a cross-cultural examination of hand-painted book illustrations and typography from the 15th and 16th centuries.

Boasting three Billboard top-10 album smashes in Roll the Bones, And the War Came, and Can't Wake Up, folk singer/songwriter Shakey Graves – the performance moniker of Austin, Texas-born Alejandro Rose-Garcia – headlines a May 10 concert at Davenport's Rhythm City Casino Resort Event Center, the artist's 2023 Movie of the Week lauded by Under the Radar magazine as "a heady intellectual concept laced with his silly sense of humor."

Appearing locally as the final guest in the 2023-24 season of Quad City Arts' Visiting Artist Series, native Hawaiian Daniel Pak will perform in a half-dozen free-to-the-public events from May 13 through 16, with TotemStar.org stating that the musician and educator "embodies the warmth and soul of the islands in his music of healing and joy."

Performing blues, folk, country, and Americana music that, according to NPR, “evokes the old-timey spirit of a thousand crackling 78 RPM records” whose “energy makes them feel new and alive,” Midwestern singer/songwriter Pokey LaFarge headlines a May 14 concert at Davenport's Redstone Room, the artist's 2022 album In the Blossom of Their Shade lauded by PopMatters as "vintage stuff that never sounds old as much as ripe and ready for cruising."

Touring in support of their most recent album that, according to No Depression, proves the band's "otherworldly qualities" make them "the quirkiest sound around," blues, rock, and pop ensemble The Claudettes headline a May 16 concert at Davenport's Redstone Room, with Americana Highways stating that in The Claudettes Go Out!, "Their tight approach to varied musical genres is adorned with no gimmicks, nothing superficial, and everything suited to inspiring melodies and spirited lyrics."

A Davenport native and the youngest person to be inducted into the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, multi-instrumentalist Matt Fuller brings his ensemble to Moline for a May 11 performance at the Sound Conservatory, the artist's Matt Fuller Band boasting Fuller on guitar, Tyrone Phillips on vocals, Bobby Huether on drums, and Dewey Lacefield on bass guitar.

Humbird, May 14

Touring in support of the band's 2024 release Right On, an album whose title track was praised by Atwood magazine as "an achingly tender ballad with a fire burning deep inside," Siri Undlin and her indie outfit Humbird headline a May 14 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, with Atwood adding that the song is "a softly stirring eruption of vulnerability and raw humanity."

Hailed by AllMusic.com as "one of the finest exemplars of blown-out shoegaze and amped-up dream pop," the alternative musicians of Ringo Deathstarr headline a May 11 concert event at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, their most recent, self-titled album praised by Post-Trash as a work that "condenses everything special about the shoegaze purveyors into one complete package."

Pages