The Philly artist who gets mistaken for Banksy

Susan Ferrence was in a rush on a December morning as she passed by Jefferson Plaza at 12th and Chestnut Streets. She was late for a workout session when an image stopped her in her tracks. It was a stenciled mural of a young child, screaming while wrapped tightly in a straitjacket. Ferrence, an art historian and director of publications at INSTAP Academic Press, took pictures of the freshly stenciled work with darkened shadows and etched grooves. She told her friends she had just spotted a Banksy. The “Banksy” turned out to be the work of a Southwest Philly artist who goes by Bad Luck. The 33-year-old, who opts to conceal his identity, had stenciled the sketch of the screaming child on a wood-paneled wall hours before Ferrence walked by it. The idea for the mural, he says, stemmed from a feeling of restriction, like being bound in a straitjacket. Bad Luck wanted to break free of his thoughts, like the child he drew screaming in enraged silence. That’s how he’s always envisioned his artwork — as a cleansing of thought and emotion. But the comparison to Banksy is something he says he never imagined or wanted. “I hate it,...