ART / SNEAK PEEK : ARTIST PONDERS SHADES OF GRAY.

Blurry and anonymous, the untitled photograph could have been taken anywhere. A shopping mall. An office tower. A public library.

Human figures are visible but their identities, even their race and sex, are purposely obscure.

Yet the picture's cool neutrality is shattered by the burning sentence strung across it: ``If the glove don't fit you must acquit.''

Artist Pat Ward Williams noticed that a curious thing happened whenever viewers pondered that image and the superimposed words of attorney Johnnie Cochran.

Some saw an indictment of a racist justice system. Others discerned an inaudible wail that Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman's killer is still at large.

That's when Williams realized that even a seemingly innocent black-and-white photo isn't necessarily, well, black and white. Nine times out of 10, it's tinted with ambiguity.

You'll find multiple shades of gray in ``Self-Possessed,'' Williams' one-woman show of installations and photography at Watts Towers Arts Center. Running through Sept. 15, the exhibition indicates how Williams' art has gravitated toward progressively cloudier visions of reality, particularly African-American reality.

Earlier in her career, says the University of California, Irvine, art professor, her photographs typically had ``a very definite opinion and a point of view that I wanted to portray.'' Take, for instance, ``What You Lookn At?'' a provocative, oversize photo collage that was shown at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art and appears in the Watts exhibition.

But the O.J. Simpson trial marked a turning point. The spectacle left Williams ``thinking about how vague life is sometimes, how even if you have a specific message at times, that doesn't always get across.'' A series of her recent, untitled pieces in the Watts show steer clear of fixed meanings and overt messages.

Williams' work often incorporates African-American family photographs, random scraps of memory that someone thought worth saving. It's a way, she says, of countering the ``negative images'' churned out by mass culture.

``There are always the photographs of black people, that we're poor and we're in the ghetto and we're standing outside the welfare office. But there's also photographs of black people that we're having fun.''

The gallery is at 1727 E. 107th St., Los Angeles. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. Sundays. Admission is free. For information, call [phone].

Sweet dreams: It sounds like a hospital ward you'd never want to visit. Guess again. ``Hearts and Gizzards'' is the title of an exhibition of quilts designed and made from 1840 to 1940 for children. The 13 quilts on display through Feb. 8 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art showcase such classic patterns as ``Mariner's Compass,'' ``Lemonyne Star'' and ``Hearts and Gizzards.''

Family tours and special discovery sessions, plus displays of 19th-century toys and clothing, show how tots spent their slumber time before ``Lion King'' bedsheets came along.

Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Admission for adults is $6; seniors or students 18 or older with ID, $4; children and/or younger students, $1; children 5 and under, free. For information, call [phone].

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Photo: Pat Ward Williams' untitled 1996 darkroom-altered si lver photo is included in the artist's one-woman show of installations and photography at Watts Towers Arts Center.