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

Recent media attention has been flattering, but intense! I've now sold out of every artwork that I had available, sorry. But there are plenty more to come, perhaps including more instances of the ones shown here, if I can find more copies of the source puzzles. If you want to know about newly available montages, please join my mailing list (see below). Meanwhile, I'm looking into publishing a book or calendar. And as an enthusiastic public speaker, I'm available to give a fun 20-to-60-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!

>>>   Please join my mailing list!   <<<

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

Constructed from two puzzles published in the 1970s.

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

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)

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 or insulting.

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 small panoramic puzzles.

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

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)

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 mansion at Orton Plantation, located in my boyhood hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. The other puzzle showed Mt. Jefferson, near my current home in the Pacific Northwest.

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)

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 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)

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 a bodhisattva named Kuan-Yin. (I'm told that a bodhisattva is loosely the Buddhist equivalent of a saint.)

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 Kuan-Yin puzzle's bottom edge with pieces from the left-hand edge of the other Kuan-Yin puzzle! Then, by swapping in 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)

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 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. 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 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)

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.

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 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 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 1979 and 1980.

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 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.

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 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 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)

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 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!

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. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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

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)

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 magically flying out of a cookie jar.

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 offer another instance for sale. (artist@puzzlemontage.com)

Made from two puzzles published in the 1980s.

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 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 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)

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. I normally prefer to float-mount my puzzle artworks rather than frame them, but in this case I needed a frame so I could attach a plaque with 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)

To give a sense of how these look hanging on the wall, here's a photo of my October 2015 display at a shop called Boomerang, in Vancouver, Washington. Like an impressionistic painting or a mosaic artwork, a puzzle montage can be appreciated in different ways depending on whether you're seeing it up close or standing back. So I always try to hang one in a spot where a viewer will first encounter it from a distance, and can then step closer. (By the way, if you're reading this on a computer screen, you've been seeing only close-up views. At a distance, the edges of pieces are less prominent.)