Come Together
The Artwork of Eli Gonzalez
Southern California based artist Eli Gonzalez has a unique style that is at once classic, and ultra modern. His depictions of people evoke an emotional response, whether they're super realistic, cartoonish, or fantastical. His artistic whims run the gamut, but no matter what he creates, it all has a unified look that can only come from Eli.
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Cardas Audio has been fortunate to work with Mr. Gonzalez, commissioning a series of images in which people are enjoying music together. The love of music is what inspired George Cardas to found our company back in 1987. George's passion for music continues to this day, and we feel that our collaborations with Eli illustrate - literally - the love all of us at Cardas Audio have for music, and sharing it with people.
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You can follow Eli on Instagram at @eliassar.
"Stay Home And Listen To Music" marks our first time working with Eli. This dates back to 2020, during the 'troubles' that had us all spending a lot more time at home. Thinking that one could do a lot worse than be stuck at home listening to music with their family, Cardas marketing director Josh Meredith came up with our "Stay Home & Listen To Music" campaign.
Using his comparatively rudimentary art skills, Josh created a block-drawing of a family of three sitting in front of a stereo, and we printed it on a t-shirt. We sold tons of this shirt, locally and around the world, and donated the proceeds to local wait-staff and bartenders who's employment status had been affected by the lockdowns.
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At some point, Josh contacted his friend Eli, and asked him to create his interpretation of the shirt-design. And Eli hit it out of the ballpark with the illustration shown above. We've since run it in industry magazines, on post-cards, on Cardas product literature, and on posters.
Realizing that Eli's previous effort could be the start of a series, we asked him to work with us again. This time we wanted to do something a bit more provocative, with a headline that served as a double-entendre: "what's the rush" might be suggesting that the man in the illustration should reconsider leaving for work in favor of listening to music with the woman. Or maybe it's saying that we need not rush out of the house just because the lockdowns were ending. Sure, we were anxious to resume our normal lives, but staying home and listening to music beats nearly anything we can imagine doing outside of the house.
For our latest installment, we asked Eli to create an illustration of a group of friends enjoying time together, gathered around a stereo system. Whether with family, children, or peers, music is a wonderful thing to share with others. It brings people closer, and helps strengthen our connections.
We feel so strongly that people should be sharing music-listening time together that we've run ads in stereo magazines such as HiFi Plus and The Absolute Sound, encouraging people do to so, regardless of the cables they're using (see left). However obviously we feel that Cardas cables really enhance the moment 😉