A jigsaw puzzle manufacturer typically uses the same die-cut pattern for many different puzzles. This makes the pieces interchangeable. So I sometimes find that I can combine portions from two or more puzzles to make a surreal "puzzle montage" that the manufacturer never imagined. I take great pleasure in discovering such strange images lying shattered, sometimes for decades, within the cardboard boxes of ordinary mass-produced puzzles.

These artworks are float-mounted or float-framed, and ready to hang on your wall. (See the bottom of this page for details.) Please note the dimensions shown under each work. They all appear about the same size here, but in reality some are much larger than others.

If you want to know about newly available montages, including any newly-available instances of ones that are currently sold out, please email me or follow my Facebook page. Meanwhile, I'm looking into publishing a book or calendar. Also, as an enthusiastic public speaker, I'm available to give a fun 20-to-45-minute talk and slideshow about my adventures with the obscure art of puzzle montage. Contact me at artist@puzzlemontage.com. Thank you for your interest!

All images © copyright Tim Klein. Please contact me for permission to use them. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

On Facebook: Puzzle Montage Art by Tim Klein

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Constructed from two puzzles published in the 1970s.

Since the French word for truck is camion, this montage's title en français is Tutancamion.

Not for sale, pending appearance in an art exhibition in Spain, May 2024.

I made this montage by combining a puzzle showing a church with a puzzle showing a carnival ride. I've been a bit surprised at the wide range of reactions it gets. Some people find it humorous, others find it affirming or joyful, and others see it as blasphemous. At any rate, it draws attention out of proportion to its relatively small size.

Made from two small panoramic puzzles.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from the pieces of two small "greeting card" puzzles from the 1980s.

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

This was the first puzzle montage I ever created that I thought was worth keeping. I used pieces from two puzzles that were probably published in the 1980s. One puzzle showed the historic mansion at Orton Plantation, located near my boyhood hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. The other puzzle showed Mt. Jefferson, near my current home in the Pacific Northwest. At the time I constructed it in about 1992, I had moved away from North Carolina but had no idea I would ever live in the Pacific Northwest, so I unwittingly made a montage of my past and my future!

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

The kingly peacock, burdened by finery, cannot stay long aloft. In dreams he takes butterfly turns in the air, as light as the least of his feathers.

Made from two puzzles from the early 1980s, one showing a peacock and another showing a maze. The "Start" and "Finish" points of the maze can be seen down low and up high within the wings.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I can find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

I made this montage out of three square puzzles published in the early 1970s. One of the puzzles showed a maze. The others were two copies of the same puzzle, showing a large ancient Chinese statue of the bodhisattva Kuan-Yin.

In the original image, the statue rests on a dark rocky pedestal visible all along the bottom edge of the puzzle. I found that although my two copies of the Kuan-Yin puzzle shared the same cut pattern, they had been run through the die cutting machine at right angles to each other. This enabled me to eliminate the pedestal from the image, by replacing one puzzle's bottom edge with pieces from the left-hand edge of the other puzzle. Then, by incorporating pieces from the maze puzzle, I gave Kuan-Yin some butterfly wings. The subtitle "Enlightenment" refers not only to the Buddhist principle of enlightenment, but also to the fact that I've "lightened" a big heavy statue and given her flight.

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

The third in my Metamorphosis series of montages involving butterflies and transformation.

Not for sale.

Part of my Metamorphosis series of montages involving butterflies and transformation. I created it from two round puzzles published in 2012, one showing a caterpillar and butterfly, and the other showing Renoir's Horsewoman in the Bois de Boulogne.

A diptych made from two puzzles published in the early 1980s: one showing a peacock, and one showing the solution to a crossword puzzle with a “questions” theme. (The jigsaw puzzle came with a blank crossword puzzle on the box. Solving the crossword would help you complete the jigsaw, and vice versa.) The two halves of the diptych are inverses, each one using all the pieces not used in the other. Click the image above to see more detail. The two 18x24" halves are float-mounted separately to be hung next to each other; the wood background shown here is not part of the artwork.

The subtitle Shall We Dance? is taken from one of the crossword answers appearing in the right half, coupled with the question mark from the left half.

Each half has its own title. Left: Convergence (Neologism). Right: Emergence (The Words Made Flesh).

This made its debut at Gallery 360 in Vancouver, Washington, as part of an exhibit called “Opposites Attract”. Artists were invited to submit works depicting opposing or complementary forces in the world.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two puzzles published in the 1980s. Most of my puzzle montages are in a single plane, with pieces from the two source puzzles intermixed. But in this one, the coins puzzle is on top of the puzzle containing the eyes, resulting in a two-layered piece. Thus, the eyes look into the viewer's eyes from the other side of a wall of gold:

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Constructed from three puzzles published in the late 1970s and early '80s.

(My thanks to Lara Seven Phillips and the Manzanita gang for puzzle assembly help.)

Constructed from the pieces of two puzzles published in the 2000s, one showing Frederick Carl Frieseke's painting The Open Window (circa 1910), and the other showing William Vanderdasson's contemporary painting Snowy Owl.

(My thanks to puzzle assembly helper Stephanie Barrow.)

I created this montage from two copies of the same puzzle published in 2002, showing Gerrit van Honthorst's 17th-century painting Adoration of the Child (which I rotated 90 degrees). Although the two puzzles were made with the same die-cut pattern, the machine operators back in 2002 happened to run them through the cutter upside-down with respect to each other. This enabled me to replace the top-left portion of one puzzle with the flipped bottom-right portion of the other, resulting in a loop of mothers and babies.

(My thanks to puzzle assemblers Michele Glover and Lara Seven Phillips.)

Constructed from the pieces of three puzzles published in the 1990s. One puzzle showed a cat, and a second puzzle showed a statue of a peacock in a temple in India. The third puzzle showed an autostereogram image of the type that was briefly a pop culture phenomenon in the early '90s.

A tribute to my mossy-rocked home state, and the man for whom it's named. Made from two puzzles from 1979, one showing a Pacific Northwest waterfall, and one showing a fuzzy white puppy whose head happened to be shaped like a certain famous powdered wig.

Made from three puzzles published in the late 1970s and early 1980s: one showing a waterfall, one showing a puppy, and one showing an antique Coca-Cola advertisement.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two puzzles published in 1979 and 1980.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Constructed from two puzzles from the 1990s, one showing a collection of clocks, and another showing Victorian ephemera. I like the way the central clock's hands from the first puzzle happen to parallel the posture of the maiden from the second puzzle. The title is a reference to the 17th century poem "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick, and the subtitle is the poem's famous first line.

Made from the pieces of three small puzzles published in 1987.

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two small puzzles, one showing a giant redwood and the other showing the Elizabeth Tower.

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I can find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made using two puzzles from the early 1980s that were pretty surreal in their own right -- one showing heads in storage behind the scenes at a wax museum, and the other showing a colorful hand and paintbrush emerging from a can of white paint.

(My thanks to puzzle assembly helpers Ivana Begley, Rod H., Beck Keller, Lara Seven Phillips, and Rob Schiavone.)

Not for sale.

Made using pieces from two puzzles from the 1970s, one showing a comically unsuccessful fisherman, and the other showing the answers to a blank crossword puzzle that was printed on the box.

I like the fact that the school at the lower left has "arcana" at its core. (Aristotelian arcana, no less!)

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Constructed from two puzzles published in the 2000s, one taken from a painting by Sueellen Ross (rotated 180 degrees here), and the other from an antique photo of a football game. The title, "Play Action" is an American football term.

(My thanks to puzzle assembler Lara Seven Phillips.)

I constructed this montage from the same two 1970s puzzles that I used in King of the Road, one showing the burial mask of King Tutankhamun, and the other showing a truck.

The title Pareidolia is a wonderful word that refers to the psychological phenomenon of perceiving faces or other patterns where there are none.

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two round, frog-themed puzzles from the late 1970s, one of which bore the caption HOMEWORK MAKES YOU UGLY.

Not for sale, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer.

Made from pieces of two puzzles published in 1978 and 1980.

A "white elephant" is a gift that actually turns out to be a burden. (Look it up on Wikipedia to learn the interesting origin of that term.)

Constructed from two puzzles published in the early 2000s, one showing a World Trade Center tribute and the other showing Ilene Meyer's painting Medusa 10. (I'm a big fan of Ilene Meyer's art.) Completed shortly after the end of the 20-year war sparked by the events of 9-11. The pieces of the two source puzzles happened to be cut in such a way that I could partially obscure the caption GOD BLESS AMERICA to reveal the word BLAME.

Temporarily not for sale, pending appearance in an art exhibition in Spain,  May 2024.

Made from two puzzles published in 1970, one showing a folk art quilt by Emeline Dean from the 1860s, and the other showing an abstract artwork called "Spectral" by John Willenbecher, from the 1960s. This artwork and Chrona-B (below) are inverses, each one using all of the puzzle pieces not used in the other.

Made from two puzzles published in 1970, one showing a folk art quilt by Emeline Dean from the 1860s, and the other showing an abstract artwork called "Spectral" by John Willenbecher, from the 1960s. This artwork and Chrona-A (above) are inverses, each montage using all of the puzzle pieces not used in the other.

Made from two small puzzles probably manufactured in the 2000s, one showing a butterfly and one showing a dog in a Santa hat. (Best viewed from a distance, for maximum pareidolia.) I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder in the gray Pacific Northwest winters, and this montage expresses the droopy blue funk that typically grips me by late December.

Not for sale.

Made from two copies of the same puzzle published in 1973, showing Frederic Remington's famous 1890 painting titled Dismounted: The Fourth Troopers Moving the Led Horses. Although the two copies of the puzzle had the same cut pattern, I found that they had been run through the die cutter upside-down with respect to each other. This enabled me to replace the top portion of one puzzle with the flipped bottom portion of the other, thus swapping heads for hooves. (As a side effect, Remington's signature in the lower left corner is echoed upside-down in the upper right corner.) Click the image to see more detail.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I can find more copies of the vintage source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale.

Made from two small puzzles from the 1970s. Rather than mingle their pieces in my usual way, I layered the two puzzles, with a couple of pieces removed from the top one to reveal an unsmiling face looking out from behind the smile.

Not for sale, but please contact me to be notified if I can find more copies of the vintage source puzzles and make another instance to offer.

Made from two puzzles published in 1983. The date in the subtitle was a highly contested national election day here in the USA, and I completed this montage while waiting to hear the results.

Not for sale.

Maybe this montage was too easy! After all, the pieces came from two puzzles showing the same scene. They were from the late 1960s, taken from a set of “four seasons” paintings by Paul Detlefsen. At the bottom of the “thawed” circle, where green spring meets white winter, the curvature of the puzzle pieces gives a nice melting effect. It's as if you, seeing the winter scene through a window, have breathed upon the glass and magically revealed a glimpse of the warm spring to come.

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Constructed from two puzzles published in the early 1990s. I borrowed the title from a book by John Bellairs that I read several times in my youth.

Not for sale, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the vintage source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

(My thanks to puzzle assemblers Heather Greiff and Lara Seven Phillips.)

Made from two puzzles that had the same cut pattern, but had been run through the cutting machine rotated 180 degrees with respect to each other.

This piece made its debut at Gallery 360 in Vancouver, Washington, as part of a group show called “Show Some Emotion”. Most of the other artists' works depicted lovers holding hands, children playing with puppies, etc. And then there was this one. I was the only artist who chose to represent the emotion “mortal terror”.

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two small puzzles, one showing a cat and one showing a collection of marbles.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I can find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer.

Made from the pieces of two small puzzles, one showing a bunny and one showing a dinosaur under a full moon.

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

A diptych made from two small puzzles published in the 1980s, one showing a dog and one showing a clown saying “Wow!!” The two halves are inverses, each one using all the pieces not used in the other.

This pair debuted at the Splendorporium gallery in Portland, Oregon, as part of a circus-themed group show.

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two puzzles published in the 1980s, one showing a horn and one showing cookies flying out of a cookie jar.

Made from two puzzles published in the 1980s.

As you may recall from your studies of time-honored classics of literature during the halcyon days of your youth spent in the hallowed halls of academia (if you weren't too busy throwing spitballs), bathos refers to the sudden juxtaposition of the lofty and the mundane.

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Sold, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two puzzles published in the 1970s, one showing a truck and one showing a maze.

I'm keeping this one, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made by mixing pieces from two small "greeting card" puzzles published in the 1970s, one showing a kitten and the other showing a rabbit.

Made from two small jigsaw puzzles, one showing a dog in a Santa hat and one showing a hedgehog. Although the two puzzles were manufactured with the same cut pattern, I found that they had been run through the die cutting machine in opposite directions, so the eyes and prickly beard are formed by the hedgehog upside-down. (A right-side-up copy of the same hedgehog puzzle is part of my montage called Muffin, above.)

Made from puzzles showing The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, and Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. The title is an amalgam of the two original paintings' titles and the names of the two artists. A plaque on the frame holds a caption in very tiny lettering, shown below:

Sold out for now, but please contact me to be notified if I'm able to find more copies of the source puzzles and make another instance to offer for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)