Jim Kroupa (b. United States) works at the intersection of sculptural fabrication, mechanical engineering, and theatrical narrative. A New York–based artist, Kroupa spent nearly four decades at the highest levels of animatronic design and puppet construction, collaborating with Jim Henson on productions including Sesame Street, Little Muppet Monsters, and The Muppets franchise, and contributing kinetic mechanisms and character work to contexts ranging from Woody Allen's Alice to Disney. As co-founder and principal of 3/Design Studio, he developed a rigorous practice in the engineering of expressive form — work that demanded sculptural precision, material intuition, and a sustained understanding of how gesture and structure combine to produce emotion at scale. Since 2024, Kroupa has channeled this expertise into an autonomous studio practice. His inaugural body of work, Repurfish, comprises a series of fish sculptures fabricated from reclaimed domestic objects — a taxonomy of imagined aquatic life assembled from the overlooked materials of everyday life. Governed equally by precision and play, the works are disarmingly human in effect: every hinge, lever, and articulated joint is carefully engineered, yet the results feel alive — part object, part performance, part theater brought into three dimensions. Kroupa's sculptures resist the condition of the static art object. Dynamic rather than fixed, they accumulate meaning over time, revealing new layers of wit and personality through extended encounter. Collectors have described living with the work as living with a presence — one that continues to surprise, provoke conversation, and reward sustained looking.Kroupa is currently developing a new series of Repurfish sculptures organized around deep-sea morphology. He lives and works in New York.