Take another puzzle piece of my art

November 13, 2018 10:22 AM

Puzzle Montage Art by Tim Klein
"Jigsaw puzzle companies tend to use the same cut patterns for multiple puzzles. This makes the pieces interchangeable, and I sometimes find that I can combine portions from two or more puzzles to make a surreal picture that the publisher never imagined. I take great pleasure in “discovering” such bizarre images lying latent, sometimes for decades, within the pieces of ordinary mass-produced puzzles."
Some favorites: Timekeeper; The Mercy Go-Round (Sunshine & Shadow); Thaw (Warm Breath on a Winter Window); Bow Wow
posted by Atom Eyes (14 comments total)

My favourite is the peacock diptych, but these are all quite great.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:33 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

Bow Wow will haunt my dreams.
posted by Mogur at 10:33 AM on November 13, 2018 [2 favorites]

Brilliant! I especially love Thaw! Dave Gorman did something similar on his show, except I think he went on to have some of his jigsaws custom-made, as well as giving away the better mixed-up puzzles to charity shops to amuse and bemuse anyone buying them.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 10:35 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

A terrific idea. I like a lot of them, but especially the two with trains: "Iron Horse" and "T'rainosaurus Rex."
posted by LeLiLo at 10:51 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

These are wonderful.
posted by Elmore at 11:07 AM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

As a rescuer of jigsaw puzzles from thrift stores, this is wonderful!
posted by vickyverky at 11:28 AM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

These are neat! Thanks for sharing.
posted by readinghippo at 11:57 AM on November 13, 2018

I love these! I used to annoy my family by doing the same thing, but far less artfully. I just thought it was cool the pieces were all the same and felt a completed puzzle was valid by virtue of the pieces coming together rather than the images. Plus we'd lose peices or they'd get eaten and inevitably have uncompleteable puzzles.
posted by GoblinHoney at 12:27 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

These are all great, and that is a brilliant post title.
posted by doop at 12:36 PM on November 13, 2018 [3 favorites]

These are great
posted by latkes at 1:02 PM on November 13, 2018

Dang these are good.
posted by cortex at 8:58 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

These are great!* Thanks for posting. Also, excellent title.

*Bow Wow, however, is nightmare fuel.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:20 PM on November 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I went into a deep dive on the 1980s bathroom puzzle to determine whether or not that is a half-eaten muffin on the toilet. (It is.)
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:47 AM on November 14, 2018 [1 favorite]

When I was a kid my grandmother told me about her mother, who was confined to a sanatorium for a long time due to tuberculosis. There wasn't a lot of entertainment back then so great-grandma would do puzzles all day. But since all the puzzles were cut from the same pattern she would be able to solve them just by the shape of the pieces, plugging the pieces down row by row like a dot matrix printer.
posted by Gortuk at 1:52 PM on November 14, 2018 [2 favorites]