Tim Klein is an artist from Vancouver, Washington, who makes surreal pictures out of ordinary jigsaw puzzles. His trick relies on a quirk of manufacturing: puzzle makers often cut many different pictures with the same die, so pieces from one puzzle can slot perfectly into another. By swapping pieces between two compatible puzzles, Klein creates physical collages, a horse with a steam engine for a body or a piglet with an owl’s eyes, that hold together just like the originals. He calls the work puzzle montage.
Below you will find how the technique works, why the pieces fit at all, nineteen of his montages with the story behind each title, and some tips if you want to try mixing puzzles at home. Klein’s own portfolio notes, which explain the source puzzles and the thinking behind many pieces, are the basis for the captions.
How a puzzle montage is made
Klein starts by hunting for second-hand puzzles, mostly in thrift stores and garage sales, many of them decades old. When he finds two that share the same cutting pattern, he lays them out side by side and begins trading pieces, testing which parts of one picture create something unexpected inside the other.
Most of his montages are flat, with pieces from both sources mixed in a single layer. A few are built in two layers, with one puzzle sitting on top of another. He has also used several copies of the same puzzle, and sometimes exploits puzzles that were run through the cutting machine rotated or flipped, which lets him reverse or reposition part of an image.
Klein has described the process as a kind of discovery rather than invention. Shuffling the pieces, he says, makes him “feel like an archaeologist unearthing a hidden artifact.” The strange image, in other words, was always latent in the cardboard. He just found it.
Why the pieces fit: shared die-cut patterns
Jigsaw pieces are stamped out by a steel cutting die, and making a new die for every design is expensive. As Klein explains on his portfolio, a manufacturer typically uses the same die-cut pattern for many different puzzles. Two puzzles with identical piece counts are not automatically compatible; the shapes must match exactly, which is why the hunt for usable pairs is a big part of the work.
That constraint is also what gives the montages their charm. The familiar puzzle seams stay visible, so you can see exactly where one picture ends and the other begins, yet the combined image still reads as a single scene. Try tracing the boundary in each picture below before taking in the whole.
The idea sits in a long tradition of collage and photomontage, and it shares something with Rob Gonsalves’s visual transformations and Stefan Kuhnigk’s coffee-stain characters: all of them find new images hidden in shapes that already exist.
Hybrid creatures and impossible landscapes
Daisy Bindi. A cat’s eyes and nose emerge from a dense bouquet of pale flowers, and the title seems to play on the bindi, the decorative forehead mark worn in South Asia, suggested by the flowers between the eyes. The swap turns a pet portrait into something closer to a festival mask.
Iron Horse. A galloping horse’s legs and tail carry the boiler, cab and smokestack of an old steam locomotive. “Iron horse” was a common 19th-century nickname for railway engines, and Klein simply makes the phrase literal. This piece was among those shown in the 2024 collage exhibition Los Raros/Las Raras in Spain.
Mountain Plantation. Klein’s very first montage joins two Golden Guild puzzles from the 1980s or 1990s. One showed the mansion at Orton Plantation near Wilmington, North Carolina, where he grew up; the other showed Mount Jefferson in Oregon, close to his later home in the Pacific Northwest. The result quietly connects the two places of his life.
How the West Was Won. A black-and-white calf peers over sunflowers riding in the bucket of a yellow wheel loader on a dusty construction site. The title borrows from the famous 1962 Western film, swapping cowboys for heavy machinery and livestock.
Thaw (Warm Breath on a Winter Window). Both source puzzles came from late-1960s Milton Bradley reproductions of Paul Detlefsen’s seasonal paintings, so the scene is the same in winter and spring. Klein credits the work “after Paul Detlefsen”. A circle of green breaks through the snow, and the curves of the pieces along its lower edge look like frost melting on glass.
Bow Wow. This diptych uses two miniature Springbok puzzles from the 1980s, one of a dog and one of a clown shouting “Wow!!”. Each half uses exactly the pieces the other leaves out, so together they form a perfect inverse pair. It made its debut in a circus-themed show at the Splendorporium gallery in Portland, Oregon.
Fairground churches, pharaoh trucks and pig puns
The Mercy-Go-Round (Sunshine and Shadow). A white country church becomes the base of a spinning swing ride, made from two Puzzlebug puzzles. Klein has said that reactions vary widely, from amusement and joy to offence. It is a good example of how a simple swap can raise real questions about faith, fun and community.
King of the Road. Built from two Springbok puzzles from the 1970s, it places a golden pharaoh mask, in the style of Tutankhamun’s, on the front of an American big-rig truck, complete with chrome exhaust stacks and headlights. The title borrows Roger Miller’s 1960s song about life on the road.
Were-Rabbit. Two small Puzzlebug puzzles, one of a fluffy white bunny and one of a dinosaur under a full moon, combine into a rabbit with a mouthful of reptile teeth. The full moon in the source picture makes the werewolf joke complete.
Pig Jaw Suzzle #2. A piglet sitting in the grass looks up through the large yellow eyes and feathered brow of an owl. The series title is a spoonerism of “jigsaw puzzle”, swapping sounds the same way the artwork swaps pieces.
Pig Jaw Suzzle #1. The same piglet appears under a leaf with the bulging red eyes of a tree frog. Placed side by side, the two pig works show how the same base puzzle can produce very different characters.
Waterfall Grille. Made from two small panoramic Perfect Fit puzzles, it replaces the front of a vintage car with a curtain of tropical waterfalls. The long, narrow format suits both the car’s grille and the wide sweep of the falls.
Elephants, coins and cookies
The Dance of the Bathroom Cleaning Fairies. Two Springbok puzzles from the 1980s meet here: ballerinas in white tutus appear to dance through a cluttered bathroom, around the sink and shelves. It turns a household chore into a ballet.
White Elephant (Present and Future). Made from Springbok puzzles from 1978 and 1980, it shows a white kitten bursting out of a red Christmas gift box. A “white elephant” is an unwanted present, and the subtitle plays on the double meaning of “present”.
T’ Rainosaurus Rex. A roaring Tyrannosaurus forms the front of a red steam train among tropical plants. Like many of Klein’s titles, the name is a pun that tells you exactly which two puzzles went into it.
The Other Side. Assembled from two American Publishing Company puzzles from the 1980s, this one breaks Klein’s usual single-layer approach. The puzzle of gold coins sits on top of a puzzle showing a face, and a gap in the coins lets a pair of eyes look out at the viewer as if from behind a wall of money.
The All-Seeing Elephant. An African elephant walking along a track looks out through a pair of human eyes. The small swap changes the whole mood of the photograph, from wildlife snapshot to something watchful and slightly unnerving.
Soda Pup. Made from Springbok puzzles from 1979 and 1980, it gives a fluffy white dog the lace-trimmed gown of a Victorian lady posed beside a vintage “Drink Coca-Cola 5¢” sign. The result looks like a nostalgic advertisement with a canine model.
A Modest Proposal for the Increase of Attendance at Classical Music Concerts. Two Springbok puzzles from the 1980s combine a brass horn with chocolate-chip cookies flying out of it, originally from a magical cookie-jar scene. The long title nods to Jonathan Swift’s 1729 satirical essay A Modest Proposal.
Where the work goes next
Klein presents his montages without glass, which he feels makes puzzles look like paintings. Instead they are float-mounted so they seem to hover a little in front of the wall, and he advises keeping them out of direct sunlight. Because he sometimes owns several copies of the same source puzzles, a signed, numbered original is not always a one-off.
His work has been shown at venues in Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, and in 2024 several pieces, including King of the Road, Iron Horse, Were-Rabbit and Bow Wow, appeared in the collage exhibition Los Raros/Las Raras in Spain.
Want to try puzzle montage yourself?
If these pictures make you look at your own puzzle shelf differently, the method is simple to test:
- Collect puzzles from the same brand and era. Puzzles made by one manufacturer around the same time are the most likely to share a cutting die.
- Compare the shapes, not just the box. Lay a few pieces from each puzzle side by side; if the knobs and holes match exactly, you may have a compatible pair.
- Look for meaningful overlaps. The best montages place a feature of one picture, such as eyes, a face or a wheel, exactly where something similar sits in the other.
- Respect the artist’s images. Klein’s portfolio states that his images are copyrighted and asks people to contact him for permission to use them.
The appeal of puzzle montage is that it never needs paint, glue or software. Everything is already in the box, waiting for someone curious enough to break the rule that each piece has only one right place.
Sources: Tim Klein: Puzzle Montage portfolio. Artist’s notes on individual works from his portfolio. Images © Tim Klein. Further reading and credit: Tim Klein on Facebook; Bored Panda; Boing Boing.
COMMENTS