The artiest "California Art Colony" I know about around here is Ojai. The biggest art market up the road from here is probably Santa Barbara, next county over.
Now over in the big town, you'll get all kinds of pockets of all kinds of stuff. Had I a shop where I live, perhaps I'd be doing something that would qualify as artistic: trying to make well-shaped suits of armor, which is at bottom a combination of sculpture (by hammering, though, not casting) and ergonomics. For the present, I am a mere student of this endeavor -- and my efforts at increasing my understanding and helping others to that may be found at
The Armour Archive.