Tina Mari Rucker is also a painter, filmmaker, and writer. She received her BA in Film Direction at Columbia College Chicago. While attending Columbia, she produced and directed a documentary titled, Numu Tekwa, Speak Comanche. It is based on the Comanche Tribe and Language Preservation committee’s efforts to preserve their language and culture. She received the largest grant amount from Columbia’s Film & Video Department at that time for the pre-production and production purposes for the documentary and also received the highest monetary amount as a recipient of the Weisman Scholarship for the completion of the documentary. Her awards continued with the Illinois Arts Council, AT&T Pioneers and an honorable mention from Red Earth Film & Video Competition. Her awards and efforts were published in People First and Chicago Tribune newspaper. After Columbia College Chicago she went to receive an MFA in at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she was awarded the Graduate College Diversity Fellowship. During that time, she produced and directed music videos, documentaries and wrote several screenplays. At that time in graduate school, she studied Art History and that is where her strong desire for art grew stronger. She began to create abstract work using oil and organize exhibitions throughout Chicago to showcase her work. Some of her pieces went to Context in New York. She cultivated relationships with art buyers and artists throughout the years and in 2014, she started her LLC. She works with both oil and wax mediums. In 2022, she transitioned her business into a brick and mortar art gallery and called it T. Mari Gallery. Once she opened her doors, the gallery was booked over two years with amazing artists and many are on the waiting list. She continuously paints while cultivating her business to help support artists.